Cryptocurrency Tuesday has gone from bad to worse as a broader sell-off is unfolding in the technology and financial sector.
bitcoin It has fallen 5% to $75,000 by early afternoon in the US, just a few hundred dollars above its low from last weekend. Ethereum ether has fallen 6.5% to near $2200, while Solana fell below $100, down 5.5%.
Shopify (SHOP), Adobe (ADBE), Salesforce (CRM), Intuit (INTU) were just some of the broader names that fell between 7% and 12% during the session. The iShares Expanded Technology Software ETF (IGV) fell 5% today. The thematic fund has now lost 14% in just one week and is almost 28% down from its October high.
Private equity stocks also fell sharply today, with giants like Blackstone (BX), Ares Capital (ARES), KKR (KKR) and Apollo (APO) all showing losses of 6% to 10%.
The sector has had a rocky road in recent months, and the slowdown accelerated after a Friday afternoon (Jan. 23) filing from a BlackRock private debt fund, BlackRock TCP Capital (TCPC), saying it intended to reduce its net asset value by 19%.
The news hinted that perhaps not everything was going as well in the economy as the headlines might suggest, and that liquidity in the system might be tighter than previously thought.
Bitcoin was certainly not in a bull market at the time of the presentation, but it was not in panic mode either, as it had risen to around the $91,000 level that same day. However, since then it has gone down quite a bit.
Stocks related to digital assets are reflecting the decline. Galaxy (GLXY) led the losses with a drop of 18% following its gains, while Strategy (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL), and Bullish (BLSH) declined between 5% and 7% during the session.
Crypto winter, but there is good news
Matt Hougan, CIO of digital asset management company Bitwise, argued that the cryptocurrency market has been in a full-scale winter since January 2025, similar to previous bear markets such as in 2018 and 2022.
“This is not a ‘bull market correction’ or a ‘bust,’ he said in a Monday note. “This is a full-blown crypto winter, similar to 2022, Leonardo-DiCaprio-in-The-Revenant style.”
On a more positive note, that prolonged bear market could be coming to an end, Hougan said. Crises, he noted, usually last about 13 months. If, as Hougan has done, you place the start of the bear market in January 2025, rather than October 2025, cryptocurrencies are a few weeks away from possibly bottoming out.
“As a veteran of multiple crypto winters, I can tell you that the end of those crypto winters looks a lot like now: despair, desperation, and malaise,” he wrote.
