Bitcoin hit its lowest point in 16 months on Friday, briefly touching the $60,000 mark. This sharp drop happened as investors around the world dumped technology stocks and pulled back from risky bets. While the price later bounced back slightly to around $64,000, the market remains on edge.
This is the weakest Bitcoin has looked since October 2024. That dip occurred just before Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election after he spent much of his campaign promising to support the crypto industry. Now, those gains are quickly disappearing. Chris Weston, a researcher at Pepperstone, noted that many investors who piled into the same popular trades are now rushing to sell all at once.
Other digital assets are feeling the pain too. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, fell to a 10-month low of $1,751 before settling near $1,891. The total value of the entire crypto market has shrunk by about $2 trillion since its peak in October. In just the last month, the crash wiped out more than $1 trillion in value.
So far this year, Bitcoin has lost 27% of its value, and Ether has dropped even further, losing 36%. The struggle isn’t limited to crypto; even gold and silver have seen wild price swings lately. Many people treated Bitcoin like a “one-way bet” that could only go up, especially during the recent hype over artificial intelligence. Joshua Chu from the Hong Kong Web3 Association said that people who borrowed too much money to buy Bitcoin are now learning a hard lesson about how volatile these markets can be.
Big investors also seem to be losing interest. According to Deutsche Bank, people pulled more than $3 billion out of U.S. Bitcoin ETFs in January alone. This follows billions of dollars in exits throughout November and December. The excitement that once drove prices to record highs has turned into a wave of caution as the global economy faces a rough patch.
