Prediction markets are signaling low odds of a decisive U.S. Supreme Court ruling on tariffs, a setup that has previously sparked short-lived volatility in bitcoin before prices stabilized.
Bitcoin traded sideways near $91,000 during Asian hours as investors awaited the Supreme Court’s decision on President Donald Trump’s tariffs, expected January 10 U.S. time.
On Polymarket, traders assign just a 24% probability that the Court will explicitly uphold Trump’s use of emergency powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs.
The outcome matters for crypto markets because prior tariff episodes have not behaved like typical macro shocks. CoinDesk Indices labeled the first-quarter 2025 episode a “Tariff Tantrum,” marked by sharp but temporary price declines driven by liquidation cascades, falling leverage demand, and momentum-based selling — rather than broad, long-term exits from the asset class. CoinDesk research found that trend-following strategies outperformed during that period by reducing exposure early, even as longer-term participation remained stable.
If the Court curtails or sidesteps Trump’s tariff authority, fiscal uncertainty could increase, according to market observers. Interactive Brokers economist Jose Torres warned that a constrained ruling would be unlikely to end the policy push.
“If the court blocks the tariffs, the administration is going to look for workarounds,” Torres told CNBC. “President Trump is very ambitious about advancing this agenda, even amid the controversy such a decision could create.”
Such a scenario could lift long-term U.S. Treasury yields and tighten global liquidity — conditions that have historically weighed on crypto markets, which are particularly sensitive to rapid shifts in both.
The risk lies less in tariffs being removed altogether and more in the possibility that a limited ruling forces the administration to rely on slower, narrower, and more easily challenged trade tools, prolonging uncertainty rather than resolving it.
Even so, CoinDesk Indices research suggests that once markets price ambiguity as the base case, bitcoin has tended to regain stability faster than equities, with correlations weakening as policy uncertainty drags on.
For now, Asian crypto traders — in a region that arguably has the most to gain from a clean rollback of Trump’s tariff regime — appear less focused on the immediate ruling and more concerned with how long uncertainty may persist once the decision is delivered.
Market Moves
- BTC: Bitcoin was little changed near $91,000, ticking slightly higher on the hour but still modestly lower over the past 24 hours.
- ETH: Ether traded around $3,100, down more than 2% on the day despite gains over the past week.
- Gold: HSBC said gold could climb to as high as $5,050 per ounce in early 2026 on geopolitical risks and rising debt, while warning of heightened volatility and the potential for a pullback later in the year if risks fade or the Fed turns more hawkish.
- Nikkei 225: Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.54% as investors looked ahead to China’s December inflation data, expected at 0.8% year over year.
