bitcoin fell below $60,000 on Friday, breaking the lows of the cryptocurrency crash in early February and hitting its weakest level since October 2024.
The largest cryptocurrency is down almost 20% in the past week alone, and has now lost more than 52% from its October high above $126,000.
Recently, several headwinds have converged on bitcoin; the most important is its largest single buyer, Michael Saylor Strategy, which became a seller. Additionally, spot bitcoin ETFs suffered persistent outflows as investors withdrew capital from the sector, allocating it instead to the hot trading of artificial intelligence and related stocks.
Persistently high inflation and an interesting labor market report on Friday also led investors to rethink the direction of US monetary policy. Markets that earlier this year expected rate cuts have now fully priced in that the Fed’s next move will be a rate hike.
With this, US stocks have lost momentum after a powerful run to all-time highs, weighing on risk appetite across markets. The Nasdaq was down more than 2% on Friday.
Cryptocurrency investors have also been grappling with renewed concerns about whether artificial intelligence and quantum computing could expose weaknesses in crypto protocols. Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) plummeted more than 40% overnight after a critical vulnerability was discovered with the help of Anthropic’s latest Opus 4.8 artificial intelligence model.
