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Bitcoin sank below $70,000 on Thursday for the first time since November 2024, wiping out all of the gains it had made since Donald Trump was elected to his second term as US president.
The world’s biggest cryptocurrency dropped almost 5 per cent to just above $69,000 as digital tokens were swept up in a sell-off in tech stocks. It later rebounded to trade 4 per cent lower at $69,650, down more than 20 per cent this year.
“Sentiment has deteriorated sharply,” said Jasper De Maere, a strategist at trading firm Wintermute. “The crypto market still feels tired as we see little appetite from anyone to step in convincingly at these levels.”
The price of ether, the second largest coin, fell 3 per cent to $2,080, taking its decline this year to nearly 30 per cent.
Bitcoin had rallied after Trump’s election victory, buoyed by his vow to make the US “the crypto capital of the world” and roll back a regulatory crackdown on the crypto industry.
Since taking office last year, the Trump administration has helped pass industry-friendly legislation while regulators lifted crypto enforcement actions, driving bitcoin’s price to a record high last summer of more than $125,000.
But since then, it has retreated as the wave of enthusiasm sparked by Trump began to wane and investors instead turned to precious metals as a long-term store of value, driving a record-breaking rally in gold and silver. Key legislation governing the crypto industry in the US has also stalled this year.
The declines gathered pace this week amid an equity sell-off sparked by investors’ worries over the impact of AI on tech companies.
Shares of Michael Saylor’s bitcoin hoarding company Strategy were down 8.2 per cent on Thursday, dipping nearly 25 per cent so far this year.
On prediction market platform Kalshi, traders began making bets last month on how low the price of bitcoin would fall this year. It shows a roughly 75 per cent chance that the price will fall below $60,000.