Having risen about 7% to over $79,000 from its panicked weekend lows near the $74,000 mark, bitcoin is again giving ground during US morning trading.
Bitcoin recently changed hands at $77,100, down 2% in the last 24 hours. Ether was faring worse, down to $2,260, or 4.7%.
The sell-off is occurring as gold and silver are posting strong gains in what appears to be a real rebound from their own panic price move last Friday.
In parallel, US stocks (particularly a sizable group of AI-related names) are falling. Nvidia (NVDA), Oracle (ORCL), Broadcom (AVGO), Micron (MU) and Microsoft (MSTR) fell between 3% and 5%, leading the Nasdaq’s 1% drop.
The largest publicly traded bitcoin holder strategy (MSTR) continues to hit new lows and is down over 2%. Coinbase (COIN) and Bullish (BLSH) have similar amounts.
Galaxy Digital (GLXY) stock is down more than 12% following disappointing fourth-quarter results. The stablecoin issuing circle (CRCL) is down another 3.5%.
Bitcoin miners turned AI infrastructure providers are posting gains, led by TeraWulf (WULF), which advanced 12% after acquiring two industrial sites in the US that could more than double the company’s power capacity to 2.8 gigawatts. Shares of Cipher Mining (CIFR) rose 4% after announcing plans to raise $2 billion in the junk bond market to finance its Black Pearl data center in Texas, which will deliver 300 megawatts of capacity under a long-term lease with Amazon Web Services.
Dead cat bounce
Options flows suggest traders are preparing for a short-lived bounce from weekend lows below the $75,000 level, according to Jake Ostrovskis, head of OTC at cryptocurrency trading firm Wintermute.
The lack of demand for upside exposure reflects conditions seen in April 2025, he added.
Strong demand for short-term downside protection has distorted the options market, driving up short-term volatility more than longer-term contracts, a setup known as forwardation, Ostrovskis noted. The analyst said he is watching for when volatility cools and the options curve normalizes back into contango as background signals.
“At that point I would feel more comfortable calculating local minima,” he said.
