Bitcoin and ether fell to multi-month lows on Friday, with the cryptocurrencies swept up in a broader flight from riskier assets as investors worried about high tech valuations and bets on short-term U.S. interest rate cuts faded.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, fell 5.5% to a seven-month low of $81,668. Ether slipped more than 6% to $2,661.37, its lowest level in four months.
Both tokens are down around 12% so far this week.
Cryptocurrencies are often seen as a barometer of risk appetite and their decline highlights how the mood in markets has transformed in recent days, with high-flying AI stocks falling and the VIX volatile.
“If this tells a story about risk sentiment as a whole, then things could start to get really, really ugly, and that’s the concern right now,” Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG, said of Bitcoin’s slide.
According to market tracker CoinGecko, around $1.2 trillion has been wiped from the market value of all cryptocurrencies over the past six weeks.
Bitcoin’s fall follows a stellar performance this year that propelled it to a record high above $120,000 in October, supported by regulatory changes favorable to crypto assets globally.
But analysts say the market remains scarred by a record single-day drop last month, which saw more than $19 billion in positions liquidated.
“The market seems a little dislocated, a little fractured, a little broken, really, since we had this sell-off,” Sycamore said.
Bitcoin has since erased all its gains since the start of the year and is now down 12% for the year, while Ether has lost almost 19%.
Citi analyst Alex Saunders said $80,000 would be an important level because it is around the average level of bitcoin holdings in ETFs.
The selloff also hurt the stock prices of cryptocurrency hoarders, following a boom in public digital asset treasuries this year as companies took advantage of rising prices to buy and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.
Shares of Strategy, once the poster child for corporate bitcoin accumulation, fell 11% this week and nearly 4% in premarket trading, languishing at a one-year low.
JP Morgan said in a note this week that the company could be excluded from some MSCI stock indexes, which could trigger forced selling by funds that track them.
Its Japanese counterpart Metaplanet has fallen about 80% from its June peak.
Crypto exchange Coinbase was down 1.9% in premarket trading and is on track to experience its longest losing streak in more than a month.
Crypto miners MARA Holdings and CleanSpark fell 2.4% and 3.6% respectively, while Gemini, newly listed by the Winklevoss twins, plunged 62% from its listing price.
“Bitcoin market conditions are the most bearish since the current bull cycle began in January 2023,” digital asset research firm CryptoQuant said in its weekly crypto report on Wednesday.
“It is very likely that we have seen most of the demand wave of this cycle pass. »
