TRUMP, the Solana-based memecoin launched by former U.S. President Donald Trump, has fallen 10.36% over the past 24 hours, placing it seventh among the biggest losers across all digital assets by market capitalization. The price decline follows the formal announcement of sweeping new U.S. tariffs that have roiled markets and triggered a spike in perceived […]

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Lawmakers in the US states of Minnesota and Alabama filed companion bills to identical existing bills that if passed into law, would allow each state to buy Bitcoin.

The Minnesota Bitcoin Act, or HF 2946, was introduced to the state’s House by Republican Representative Bernie Perryman on April 1, following an identical bill introduced on March 17 by GOP state Senator Jeremy Miller.

Meanwhile, on the same day in Alabama, Republican state Senator Will Barfoot introduced Senate Bill 283, while a bi-partisan group of representatives led by Republican Mike Shaw filed the identical House Bill 482, which allows for the state to invest in crypto, but essentially limits it to Bitcoin (BTC).

Twin Alabama bills don’t explicitly name Bitcoin

Minnesota’s Bitcoin Act would allow the state’s investment board to invest state assets in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and permit state employees to add crypto to retirement accounts.

It would also exempt crypto gains from state income taxes and give residents the option to pay state taxes and fees with Bitcoin.

The twin Alabama bills don’t explicitly identify Bitcoin, but would limit the state’s crypto investment into assets that have a minimum market value of $750 billion, a criterion that only Bitcoin currently meets.

26 Bitcoin reserve bills now introduced in the US

Introducing identical bills is not uncommon in the US and is typically done to speed up the bicameral legislative process so laws can pass more quickly.

Bills to create a Bitcoin reserve have been introduced in 26 US states, with Arizona currently the closest to passing a law to make one, according to data from the bill tracking website Bitcoin Laws.

Pennsylvania was one of the first US states to introduce a Bitcoin reserve bill, in November 2024. However, the initiative was reportedly eventually rejected, with similar bills also killed in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Related: North Carolina bills would add crypto to state’s retirement system 

According to a March 3 report by Barron’s, “red states” like Montana have faced setbacks to the Bitcoin reserve initiatives amid political confrontations between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Additional reporting by Helen Partz.

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There’s a crazy theory on social media that US President Donald Trump’s newly announced reciprocal tariff plan — which hits all countries with a minimum 10% tariff — could have been designed by an artificial intelligence chatbot.

Only a short period after Trump announced the tariffs at the White House Rose Garden on April 2, some X users claim they were able to duplicate the same tariff plan with a rudimentary prompt using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

“I was able to duplicate it in ChatGPT,” NFT collector DCinvestor told his 260,000 followers on X following the Donald Trump announcement of reciprocal tariffs on 185 countries on April 2. 

“It also told me that this idea hadn’t been formalized anywhere before, and that it was something it came up with,” he added, referring to the chatbot’s ability to calculate the tariff rates. “FFS. Trump admin is using ChatGPT to determine trade policy,” he added.

Of course, the similarities between the artificial intelligence-generated tariff plan and Trump’s plan could also be simply coincidental.

DCInvestor’s observation came in response to crypto trader Jordan Fish, also known as Cobie, who also asked ChatGPT using the prompt: “What would be an easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be imposed on other countries so that the US is on even playing fields when it comes to trade deficit. Set a minimum of 10%.” 

Journal of Public Economics editor Wojtek Kopczuk also experimented with ChatGPT, which generated the same results. “I think they asked ChatGPT to calculate the tariffs from other countries, which is why the tariffs make absolutely no fucking sense,” he said. 

Author Krishnan Rohit postulated on X that this “might be the first large-scale application of AI technology to geopolitics.” ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily, he observed. 

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs lead to crypto dip

Founder and CEO of supply chain logistics platform Flexport, Ryan Petersen, said his firm had reverse-engineered the formula the Trump administration used to generate the reciprocal tariffs. 

“It’s quite simple, they took the trade deficit the US has with each country and divided it by our imports from that country,”

An editor at The Yale Review, James Surowiecki, said something similar, “they just took our [US] trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.”

Related: ‘National emergency’ as Trump’s tariffs dent crypto prices

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which come into effect on April 5, have hit all countries with a 10%  levy, with some nations facing even larger rates, such as China with a 34% tariff, Japan with 24%, and the European Union with 20%. 

Crypto markets reacted particularly badly, plunging 5% after the announcement as Bitcoin (BTC) fell by $5,500 to $82,277 before recovering marginally, according to CoinGecko. 

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Crypto markets dipped after US President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency and sweeping tariffs on all countries as part of his latest salvo in the ongoing trade war. 

The Trump administration has hit all countries with a 10% tariff starting April 5, with some countries facing even larger rates, such as China facing a 34% tariff, the European Union 20%, and Japan 24%. 

During an April 2 speech in the Rose Garden at the White House, Trump said the US is charging countries “approximately half of what they are and have been charging us.”

🚨 @POTUS signs an Executive Order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world.

It’s LIBERATION DAY in America! pic.twitter.com/p7UnfE617B

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 2, 2025

The crypto market briefly went up at the news of a 10% sweeping tariff,  but once the full scope became known, it dipped with bleeding across the board. 

Bitcoin (BTC) had been staging a rally, reaching a session high at $88,500 but dropped 2.6% back to around $82,876. Meanwhile, CoinGecko data shows Ether (ETH) dropped over 6% from $1,934 to $1,797 following the tariff announcements and the total crypto market cap dropped 5.3% to $2.7 trillion. 

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures market sentiment for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, returned a score of 25, classed as extreme fear, in its latest April 2 update. 

However, prices have clawed back some losses since. Bitcoin has recovered 0.8% to $83,205. While Ether regained 1.2% to take back $1,810.

Stock markets didn’t fare much better; trading resource The Kobeissi Letter said in an April 2 post to X that the stock market index S&P 500 erased over $2 trillion in market cap, working out to be roughly $125 billion per minute.

Trump tariffs could bring certainty to markets

Rachael Lucas, a crypto analyst at Australian crypto exchange BTC Markets, said the brief surge was a case of “uncertainty relief,”  then a sell-off as the full tariff details were released. 

“On BTC Markets, trading volume surged 46% as local traders scrambled to reposition. Big players took profit on the spike, while smaller investors hesitated,” she said in a statement.

She added that if China or the European Union “hit back hard,” expect another round of panic selling.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged US trading partners in an April 2 interview with Bloomberg against taking retaliatory steps, arguing “this is the high end of the number” for tariffs if they don’t try to add more levies in response, which could provide a “ceiling” and certainty for markets.

David Hernandez, a crypto investment specialist at crypto asset manager  21Shares, told Cointelegraph that markets experienced significant volatility during Trump’s speech, but the clarity could be a good thing in the long term. 

“Although the tariff rates were slightly higher than expectations, the announcement provided much-needed clarity on the scope and scale of the policy,” he said.

Related: 70% chance of crypto bottoming before June amid trade fears: Nansen

“Markets thrive on certainty, and with speculation now largely removed, institutional investors may see an opportunity over the coming days to take advantage of compressed valuations.”

Hernandez says global responses will be key for the market going forward, speculating that Mexico and key East Asian economies, including China, South Korea, and Japan, could be evaluating countermeasures.

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