What if the US hits major Chinese banks with secondary sanctions?
Secondary sanctions threatening major Chinese banks' dollar-clearing is the genuine systemic tail here: a correspondent-banking and dollar-funding shock that bid Treasuries on flight-to-quality while Bitcoin gets a non-sovereign-reserve hedge bid - the cascade's bank-contagion framing is apt. Rhymes with the 2014 BNP Paribas $8.9bn settlement and broadly with Lehman-style funding freezes. China is the target; global correspondents and Russia-trade conduits transmit it. The forward angle is cutting a G-SIB-scale Chinese bank from dollars is unprecedented, so tail risk of weaponizing CIPS/yuan retaliation is the real second-order trade.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. US sanctions major Chinese banks for processing Russian trade, threatening their dollar-clearing access and global correspondent links. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Credit spreads ▲ · Dollar/reserve confidence ▲ · Trade tension ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -3.6% hist -4.83–-0.06% · other way +27.47% (n=12) |
| 2 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -2.9% hist -2.22–-0.86% · other way +0.06% (n=12) |
| 3 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.8% hist -1.55–+0.67% · other way +2.75% (n=12) |
| 4 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.4% hist -2.45–+2.19% · other way +3.35% (n=12) |
| 5 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.4% hist -1.61–-0.34% · other way +3.69% (n=12) |
| 6 | Bitcoin BTCon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -2.0% hist -5.22–+1.2% · other way +6.05% (n=11) |
| 7 | Alibaba BABAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.69–-0.27% · other way -3.18% (n=11) |
| 8 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.0% hist -1.41–-0.33% · other way +0.09% (n=12) |
| 9 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.84–+0.82% · other way -1.07% (n=12) |
| 10 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.29–+3.15% · other way +2.63% (n=12) |
| 11 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.57–+0.4% · other way +5.79% (n=12) |
| 12 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -2.18–-0.17% · other way +2.53% (n=12) |
| 13 | Chinese yuan CNY 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -1.7% hist -1.42–-0.45% · other way -0.69% (n=12) |
| 14 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -1.7% hist -1.06–+0.14% · other way +0.37% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust history long on MSTR/BTC: clean, on-channel — the March-2023 SVB/Signature analogues are exactly the debanking trade a Chinese-bank dollar-clearing sanction reignites; the cascade's reflexive risk-off short over-reaches.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AVGO AVGO | LONG | +3.4% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 68% | 25 | 0.35 | ⚠ differs |
| KRW KRW | SHORT | -1.4% · 5d -0.1% | 67% | 32 | 0.34 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CL CL | SHORT | -3.9% · 5d -2.5% | 74% | 33 | 0.34 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MRVL MRVL | SHORT | -1.2% · 5d -3.1% | 70% | 33 | 0.33 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -2.5% · 5d -1.1% | 68% | 33 | 0.33 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -4.2% · 5d -5.3% | 71% | 15 | 0.30 | ✓ matches cascade |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -0.1% | 66% | 31 | 0.26 | ✓ matches cascade |
| SPX SPX | LONG | +0.1% · 5d +0.2% | 63% | 39 | 0.25 | ⚠ differs |
| SMH SMH | LONG | +1.6% · 5d -0.8% ↺ fades | 63% | 33 | 0.22 | ⚠ differs |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +1.7% · 5d +3.8% | 63% | 14 | 0.20 | ⚠ differs |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -1.9% · 5d -1.1% | 61% | 33 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AUD AUD | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d +0.0% ↺ fades | 60% | 32 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MSTR MSTR | SHORT | -2.8% · 5d -3.0% | 61% | 33 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -3.9% · 5d -3.2% | 60% | 17 | 0.15 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
Secondary sanctions threatened repeatedly; sanctioning major China banks' dollar-clearing is systemically restrained. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.