Bitcoin's Resilience During Tariff Chaos Impresses Wall Street Firm Bernstein

"Hi Curly, kill anyone today," said Billy Crystal's Mitch to Jack Palance's Curly in City Slickers. "Day ain't over yet," replied Curly.

Bernstein, though, is ready to call it a day, saying bitcoin's (BTC) being down just 26% from its record high of less than three months ago shows resilience.

Previous crises, such as the Covid-19 epidemic and interest rate shocks, saw the world's largest cryptocurrency "fall of the cliff" with 50-70% drawdowns, the report noted.

The price action "suggests demand from more resilient capital," the analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote.

"Bitcoin’s digital gold thesis has strengthened driven by growing institutional adoption - institutional flows via ETFs and corporate treasuries," the authors wrote.

Still, tariffs are bad news for the miners.

They impact the mining supply chain, and this has negative implications for the U.S. bitcoin miners' hashrate, Bernstein said. The hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain, and is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty.

Large bitcoin miners, such as Riot Platforms (RIOT), IREN (IREN), MARA Holdings (MARA) and CleanSpark (CLSK), could gain market share as they are already scaled and have artificial intelligence (AI) optionality, the report added.

Read more: Why Trump's Tariffs Could Actually Be Good for Bitcoin