Crypto’s Tuesday has turned from bad to worse as a broader sell-off in the tech sector and financials is unfolding.
Bitcoin has fallen back 5% to $75,000 in the early U.S. afternoon hours, only a few hundred dollars above its low from last weekend. Ethereum’s ether has dropped 6.5% to near $2,200, while Solana slipped below $100, down 5.5%.
Shopify (SHOP), Adobe (ADBE), Salesforce (CRM), Intuit (INTU) were just a few names of the broader tumbled 7%-12% during the session. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) declined 5% today. The thematic fund has now lost 14% in just a week and is nearly 28% lower since its October peak.
Also down hard today are private-equity stocks, with giants like Blackstone (BX), Ares Capital (ARES), KKR (KKR) and Apollo (APO) all showing losses of 6%-10%.
The sector has had a rough ride in recent months, with the downturn picking up speed after a Friday evening filing (Jan. 23) from a BlackRock private debt fund — BlackRock TCP Capital (TCPC) — saying it intended to mark down the net value of its assets by 19%.
The news hinted that perhaps all was not as well with the economy as the headlines might suggest, and that liquidity in the system might be tighter than otherwise thought.
Bitcoin certainly wasn’t in a bull market at the time of the filing, but it wasn’t in panic mode either, having earlier that day risen to about the $91,000 level. It’s been pretty much straight down since, though.
Digital asset-related stocks are mirroring the slide. Galaxy (GLXY) was leading losses with a 18% decline following its earnings, while Strategy (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL), Bullish (BLSH) declined 5%-7% during the session.
Crypto winter, but there’s good news
Matt Hougan, CIO of digital asset management firm Bitwise, argued that the crypto market has been in a full-scale winter since January 2025, similar to past bear markets like in 2018 and 2022.
“This is not a ‘bull market correction’ or ‘a dip,’ he said in a Monday note. “It is a full-bore, 2022-like, Leonardo-DiCaprio-in-The-Revenant-style crypto winter.”
On a more positive note, that prolonged bear market could be nearing the end, Hougan said. The downturns, he noted, typcially last about 13 months. If, as Hougan has, you place the beginning of the bear market at January 2025, rather than October 2025, crypto is within weeks of possibly bottoming.
“As a veteran of multiple crypto winters, I can tell you that the end of those crypto winters feel a lot like now: despair, desperation, and malaise,” he wrote.