A rout in Bitcoin deepened on Friday as investors rushed to safe assets marking a dramatic reality check for one of the most popular Trump trades. The cryptocurrency tumbled as much as 7.1% on Friday to the lowest since early November and is down some 27% since it hit an all-time high less than six weeks ago. The selloff came amid a broad plunge in cryptocurrencies, with Ether, Polkadot and XRP all dropping more than 7% on Friday. “The last time we saw sentiment like this was 2022,” said Caroline Bowler, chief executive officer of BTC Markets Pty Ltd, referring to the “crypto winter” when prices plummeted amid rising interest rates and industry woes. “This tanking can be viewed as a response to macro fears on Trump’s tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty.
The focus on trade tensions led to a broad risk-off decline across markets on Friday, pushing down almost all Asian stock markets and fueling declines in European futures. But cryptocurrencies — which are deeply exposed to shifts in risk appetite — were among the worst hit.Bitcoin has now fallen more than 20% in February. If the decline holds through the end of Friday, it would mark the biggest monthly drop since June 2022. The selloff underscores a swift change of fortunes for what was previously one of the most popular Trump trades in global markets: buying Bitcoin on the expectation that the president’s crypto-friendly approach would lead to a broad rally. That worked for a while. Bitcoin hit its all-time high of $109,241 on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. “Given the macro environment, it’s not surprising to see we are where we are,” said Stefan von Haenisch, director of over-the-counter trading in Asia Pacific at crypto custody firm Bitgo Inc. Traders are still waiting for Trump to come up with concrete steps for the sector including a Bitcoin stockpile, he said.
What Bloomberg’s Strategists Say…
“The real panic may be ahead of us still. Bitcoin always has another 70%+ crash in its future, by construction. $72k-$74k would appear to be the technical crunch zone that might trigger the next crypto winter.“
— Mark Cudmore, MLIV Executive Editor
Investors are now being forced to consider quite how far the world’s biggest cryptocurrency can fall. There is support for the coin around $70,000, said Ruslan Lienkha, chief of markets at crypto platform YouHodler, pointing to technical analysis. But he said investors shouldn’t assume the rout in Bitcoin will get that bad. Bitcoin traded around $78,900 at 8:30 a.m. in London. Bearish sentiment this week has also hit spot US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, with investors pulling out more than $1 billion on Tuesday, the biggest one-day outflow since their debut last year.
nick note the big story here is that Bitcoin has been hacked
The Lazarus hacker group is a Consortium of Chinese Russian and North Korea hackers. I believe utilizing the first test run of china’s quantum computer (specifically designed to crack high level encryption codes) stole 1,5 billion in bitcoin. The hack was amazingly successful with 44,000 coins stolen for a value of 1.5 billion dollars. They were able to liquidate those coins, turn them into gold and bring the money home. And nobody can do shit about it. The smart money is a bailing. Bitcoin has had as much of a 30% drop off its recent high. A vast majority of new investors are now break even at best with many underwater. And there’s great fear in the market as it should be. I am preparing for you a detailed BlackMask market update that gives you the non-public information of what went on here. And how to profit from the scary days coming