Nvidia, one of the global leaders in artificial intelligence (AI) chip production with headquarters in California, reportedly faced a police raid in its French offices this week. The action came as a part of a general inquiry of French antitrust authorities into the cloud computing sector.
The Wall Street Journal reported the raid on Sept. 28, although neither Nvidia nor the French enforcement agencies have officially commented on what happened.
A press release on the webpage of the French antitrust agency, Autorité de la Concurrence, refers to an unannounced inspection in the graphics cards sector. According to the release, a judge authorized the raid on the company’s premises for implementing “anticompetitive practices in the graphics cards sector.”
However, the raid itself does not “pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the law, which could be imputed to the company,” the message from the agency specifies.
Autorité de la Concurrence refers to its own opinion, issued in conclusion to a year-long study of the cloud computing sector. Published in June 2023, this document does not mention Nvidia. Instead it focuses on other tech companies, namely the three hyper scalers” — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Clou,d and Microsoft Azure. According to the agency’s data, they represent 80% of the spending growth in public cloud infrastructures and applications in France in 2021:
“Amazon and Microsoft have captured 46% and 17% respectively of revenues from IaaS and PaaS services in 2021. Given their financial capacities and their digital ecosystems, these hyperscalers are in a position to hinder competition development.”
The agency is considering various options provided by the national competition laws and the European Data Act to combat this tendency.
Nvidia inevitably comes under the regulators’ attention due to its unique position as the hardware producer for the most innovative sectors of the digital industry. The company’s recent quarterly report revealed that the United States regulators asked it to curb exports of AI chips to “some Middle East countries.” A day later, the United States Department of Commerce denied this information.
United States President Donald Trump has exempted an array of tech products including, smartphones, chips, computers, and select electronics from tariffs, giving the tech industry a much-needed respite from trade pressures.
According to the US Customs and Border Protection, storage cards, modems, diodes, semiconductors, and other electronics were also excluded from the ongoing trade tariffs.
“Large-cap technology companies will ultimately come out ahead when this is all said and done,” The Kobeissi letter wrote in an April 12 X post.
The tariff relief will take the pressure off of tech stocks, which were one of the biggest casualties of the trade war. Crypto markets are correlated with tech stocks and could also rally as risk appetite increases on positive trade war headlines.
Following news of the tariff exemptions, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) broke past $85,000 on April 12, a signal that crypto markets are already responding to the latest macroeconomic development.
Markets hinge on Trump’s every word during macroeconomic uncertainty
President Trump walked back the sweeping tariff policies on April 9 by initiating a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs and lowering tariff rates to 10% for countries that did not respond with counter-tariffs on US goods.
Bitcoin surged by 9% and the S&P 500 surged by over 10% on the same day that Trump issued the tariff pause.
Macroeconomic trader Raoul Pal said the tariff policies were a negotiation tool to establish a US-China trade deal and characterized the US administration’s trade rhetoric as “posturing.”
Bitcoin advocate Max Keiser argued that exempting select tech products from import tariffs would not reduce bond yields or further the Trump administration’s goal of lowering interest rates.
Yield on the 10-year US government bond spikes following sweeping trade policies from the Trump administration. Source: TradingView
The yield on the 10-year US Treasury Bond shot up to a local high of approximately 4.5% on April 11 as bond investors reacted to the macroeconomic uncertainty of a protracted trade war.
“The concession just given to China for tech exports won’t reverse the trend of rates going higher. Confidence in US bonds and the US Dollar has been eroding for years and won’t stop now,” Keiser wrote on April 12.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
Bitcoin remains on track to surpass $1.8 million by 2035 despite recent price corrections and waning investor appetite caused by ongoing global trade tensions, according to Joe Burnett, director of market research at Unchained.
Speaking during Cointelegraph’s Chainreaction live show on X, Burnett said that Bitcoin is still in a long-term bullish cycle and could potentially rival or surpass gold’s $21 trillion market capitalization within the next decade.
Despite tariff uncertainty limiting risk appetite among investors, research analysts remain optimistic about Bitcoin’s (BTC) long-term prospects for the next decade.
“When I think about where Bitcoin will be in 10 years, there are two models I admire,” Burnett said. “One is the parallel model, which suggests that Bitcoin will be about $1.8 million in 2035.” “The other is Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin 24 model, which suggests Bitcoin will be $2.1 million by 2035.”
Burnett emphasized that both are “good base cases,” adding that Bitcoin’s trajectory could exceed these predictions depending on broader macroeconomic factors.
🎙Could Bitcoin really hit $10m by Q1 2035? Perhaps.
“The automobile industry is significantly more valuable than the horse and buggy industry,” Burnett said, adding that Bitcoin’s more advanced technological properties will make it surpass the $21 trillion market capitalization of gold. He added:
“The gold market is an estimated $21 trillion market. If Bitcoin just hit $21 trillion and had Bitcoin-gold parity, Bitcoin would be $1 million per coin today.”
Since US President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, global markets have been under pressure due to heightened trade war fears. Hours after taking office, Trump threatened to impose sweeping import tariffs aimed at reducing the country’s trade deficit, weighing on risk sentiment across both equities and crypto.
While Bitcoin’s role as a safe-haven asset may reemerge amid ongoing trade war concerns, physical gold and tokenized gold remain the current winners.
Top tokenized gold assets, trading volume. Source: CoinGecko, Cex.io
Tariff fears led tokenized gold trading volume to surge to a two-year high this week, topping $1 billion for the first time since the US banking crisis in 2023, Cointelegraph reported on April 10.
Bitcoin’s volatility is falling during both bear and bull markets, signaling its growing maturity as an asset class.
While another 80% drawdown during future bear markets is still possible, this will act as a robust acquisition period for the “strongest” holders, Burnett said, adding:
“The highs bring [Bitcoin] attention, and the deep, dark bear markets move coins into the hands of the strongest, most convicted holders, as fast as possible.”
Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and chief investment officer at Maelstrom, predicted Bitcoin could climb to $250,000 by the end of 2025 if the US Federal Reserve formally enters a quantitative easing cycle.
Despite the optimistic predictions, investors remain cautious and continue “rebalancing their portfolios” but are unlikely to take on significant positions in the next 90 days before markets gain more clarity on global tariff negotiations, Enmanuel Cardozo, market analyst at real-world asset tokenization platform Brickken, told Cointelegraph.
“With money flowing out of Bitcoin ETFs, investors are looking for safer spots to hold their cash right now, including strong currencies. Gold’s a traditional vehicle in these cases and a go-to when markets are uncertain,” he added.
Since the beginning of 2025, the price of gold has risen over 23%, outperforming Bitcoin, which has fallen by more than 10% year-to-date, TradingView data shows.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and crypto exchange Binance have asked a US federal judge for an additional two-month pause in their nearly two-year legal battle.
“Since the Court stayed this case, the Parties have been in productive discussions, including discussions concerning how the efforts of the crypto task force may impact the SEC’s claims,” both parties said in an April 11 joint status report with the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
SEC requests Binance to agree to the extension
According to the filing, the SEC requested and Binance agreed to another 60-day extension as the regulator continues to seek permission to “approve any resolution or changes to the scope of this litigation.”
“The Defendants agreed that continuing the stay is appropriate and in the interest of judicial economy,” the filing said.
The request comes not long after the SEC dropped a string of crypto-related lawsuits against crypto exchanges Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini, as well as Robinhood and Consenys.
At the end of the 60-day period, the SEC and Binance plan to submit another joint status report. This marks the second 60-day pause the SEC and Binance have requested this year, following a previous extension granted by the judge on Feb. 11.
The recently launched crypto task force was a key reason behind the request for the second extension. Source: CourtListener
Formed just a day after Gensler resigned on Jan. 21, the task force said it aims to “help the Commission draw clear regulatory lines, provide realistic paths to registration, craft sensible disclosure frameworks, and deploy enforcement resources judiciously.”
The SEC’s legal battle with Binance has dragged on for almost two years. It began in June 2023 when the agency filed a lawsuit against Binance, its US platform, and CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
The US regulator pressed 13 charges against Binance, including unregistered offers and sales of the BNB and Binance USD tokens, the Simple Earn and BNB Vault products, and its staking program.