As much of the world celebrated Christmas, Bitcoin (BTC) quietly looked poised to reclaim the $100,000 level after falling below $93,000 just before the holiday.
However, the rally stalled just above $99,800 when Asia opened its doors on Thursday morning and quickly dropped to around $95,000 just hours later.
At press time, Bitcoin was trading at $95,300, down 3.1% in the last 24 hours.
The broader CoinDesk 20 index was down 4.2% over the same time period, with ETH, SOL, XRP, ADA, and AVAX among the cryptocurrencies on that indicator with losses of 4% to 7%.
US markets are open on Thursday and stock index futures point to modest initial losses; gold and oil are marginally in the green.
Cryptocurrency price action over the past 48 hours has surely been on very low volume and Bitcoin has still more than doubled so far this year, but it may have been overlooked in last week’s dips that The tailwind of lower interest rates could have turned into a headwind.
The 10-year Treasury yield continued to rise early Thursday, now sitting at 4.63% and within a few basis points of its 2024 peak. The yield is now ahead by nearly 100 basis points since The Federal Reserve cut short-term benchmark rates by 50 basis points in September.
Macroeconomic researcher Jim Bianco noted that the rapid rise in long-term rates following a Federal Reserve rate cut is almost unprecedented in modern monetary history. “The bond market will continue to sell off (higher yields) the more the Fed talks about rate cuts in 2025,” Bianco said. “If the Fed doesn’t back down from its rate cut talks, bond yields will rise as much as necessary to start breaking things down, to kill inflation.”
