Newsletters
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, fell below its 2025 starting level to $93,557.30 on Sunday, briefly touching an intraday low of $93,043.50 after having rallied above a record $126,000 just a month ago.
Peaking at $126,186, Bitcoin’s year-to-date gain neared 35% before a later slide erased those gains and pushed the price to a six-month low.
Institutional flows that helped drive the rally have eased. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs)—pooled investment vehicles that trade on stock exchanges—previously attracted over $25 billion in net inflows, lifting assets to roughly $169 billion, according to Bloomberg, but allocators and some corporate treasuries have recently stepped back.
The broader sell-off in risk assets deepens as investors scale back expectations for a U.S. Federal Reserve rate cut at the upcoming policy meeting, following White House statements that October inflation and labor data would not be fully released, clouding the Fed’s policy outlook. Market pricing now implies roughly a 40% chance of a December cut, down from about 90% earlier this month and just over 60% earlier this week.
Meanwhile, earlier enthusiasm tied to a pro-crypto policy stance in Washington has cooled, and the pullback in high-growth technology shares has reduced risk appetite more broadly. Market participants say the recent break lower comes after an extended period of sideways trading, leaving prices more vulnerable once buyers turned cautious.
Bitcoin’s swings continue to reflect its boom-and-bust history: a sharp surge in 2017, a steep decline in 2018, and repeated reversals since. This year alone, the price fell to roughly $74,400 in April following tariff headlines, rebounded to fresh highs, and then rolled over again.
The downturn hits lower-liquidity digital assets harder. A MarketVector gauge tracking the bottom half of the largest 100 tokens is down about 60% this year, underlining how altcoins tend to lag when risk demand fades. Bitcoin still accounts for nearly 60% of the approximately $3.2 trillion total crypto market value.
Among other major cryptocurrencies, Ether fell to $3,194.72, XRP to $2.26, and Solana to $141.33, with each posting weekly losses in the range of 10% to 15%. The total cryptocurrency market, which reached a record $4.28 trillion in October, has now fallen to $3.24 trillion, its lowest level since June.
2 min read
