Today is a pivotal and dangerous moment for crypto. In my twelve years in this space, I have never seen the conditions we’re experiencing now, even in our most bearish cycles. Individually, these signals would be disconcerting. Together, they are signs of a major potential crisis. Whatever happened to calls for utility or onboarding the next billion? The first major concern is that fewer and fewer builders are looking for smart contract audits, which has come up time and time again in my conversations wi ...

Core Insights - The announcement of a 100% tariff on Chinese imports by US President Donald Trump triggered significant market volatility, affecting both traditional and digital markets [1] - The event highlighted the limitations of major centralized crypto exchanges, which struggled to handle the surge in trading activity [2][3] Centralized Exchanges - Following the tariff announcement, traders exhibited two behaviors: cutting losses and buying the dip, leading to an overload of exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken [2] - Users reported issues such as frozen dashboards and failed trades, indicating that centralized platforms may not scale effectively during high volatility [2][3] Decentralized Finance (DeFi) - In contrast to centralized exchanges, DeFi protocols operated smoothly during the market turmoil, with Aave liquidating approximately $180 million in collateral without downtime [4] - Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives exchange, maintained zero latency despite record traffic, attributing its performance to its HyperBFT consensus system [5] - Uniswap processed an estimated $9 billion in daily trading volume without notable slowdowns, showcasing the resilience of DeFi platforms during market stress [5]