A bout of selling buffeted crypto as the optimism sparked by President-elect Donald Trump's embrace of the sector begins to cool.
Bitcoin fell below $95,000 at one point on Tuesday, while an index of smaller digital assets slid as much as 15%, one of its biggest intraday drops of 2024.
Speculators plowed into crypto after the US election on Nov. 5, spurred by Trump's pledge to create a supportive regulatory backdrop and his controversial backing for a national Bitcoin reserve. At the same time, the notorious volatility of digital assets leaves investors prone to exiting bets quickly.
Bitcoin hit a record $103,800 on Dec. 5 but subsequently struggled to stay above the six-figure level. The overall crypto market has shed about $200 billion in the past 24 hours, based on figures from tracker CoinGecko.
Recent trading points to “deleveraging across the crypto ecosystem,” said Sean Farrell, head of digital-asset strategy at Fundstrat Global Advisors LLC. One trigger may be caution ahead of US inflation data on Wednesday that may color expectations for Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts, according to Farrell.
About $1.6 billion of bullish crypto positions using derivatives were liquidated in the past 24 hours, Coinglass data show, a sign of leveraged bets unraveling.
Trump's Agenda
Trump has picked a digital-asset proponent to be the next head of the US securities regulator and named the first-ever White House czar for artificial intelligence and crypto. Trump used to be a crypto skeptic but pivoted as the industry spent big on promoting its interests during election campaigning.
For fans of digital assets, a boom lies ahead as the president-elect rips up a crackdown imposed by the Biden administration. Critics say wider mainstream crypto acceptance brings a panoply of risks.
About $10 billion has poured into US spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded funds since Trump became president-elect. Meanwhile, Bitcoin accumulator MicroStrategy Inc. on Monday said it had purchased another $2.1 billion of the token.
Traders may view MicroStrategy's announcements of historical purchases as “implicitly pulling a pretty significant spot bid from the market,” Farrell said.
Bitcoin changed hands at $96,615 as of 5:28 a.m. on Tuesday in London. Smaller tokens such as Ether and meme-crowd favorite Dogecoin struggled for traction.
Fairlead Strategies LLC technical analyst Katie Stockton in a note recommended a “neutral short-term bias” after Bitcoin's failure to remain above $100,000.
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