The largest cryptocurrency, , fell below $60,000 on Friday (local time), reaching its lowest level since October 2024, just before Donald Trump’s election, which pushed it to a record high.
The currency fell by about 6 per cent around 1615 GMT, to $59,770.9, before paring its losses slightly.
The election of , a staunch advocate of cryptocurrencies, to the White House in November 2024 for a second term sparked a wave of enthusiasm in the sector, sending the price of the cryptocurrency soaring to nearly $110,000.
The has lost over half its value since it reached a price above $126,000 in October last year and is now worth less than it was when crypto-friendly Trump retook the White House, Bloomberg reported.
By 11:20 am in New York, Bitcoin was trading at around $60,800, having recovered a bit from earlier lows. It was the sixth straight day of declines, making it Bitcoin’s longest losing streak since August. Smaller tokens were faring even worse.
Here’s why Bitcoin declined
The recent crash in was driven by multiple factors, including capital outflows from Bitcoin-focused exchange-traded funds, rising geopolitical uncertainty, and growing doubts over the strength of a key demand driver in the market. Investors have increasingly focused on Strategy Inc., the Bitcoin-heavy company co-founded by Michael Saylor, amid concerns over the sustainability of the corporate digital-asset treasury strategy that played a major role in supporting the previous crypto rally.
Strategy recently revealed that it had sold 32 BTC from its reserves, the first such disposal in several years. Emma Bernuau, a consultant at Eurosagency, told AFP that while the amount was minimal, the symbolic significance was considerable.
Additionally, the broader backdrop is increasingly becoming less favourable as well. According to reports, for most of the last decade, cryptocurrencies occupied a privileged place in the risk-taking economy. However, capital that previously poured steadily into cryptocurrencies is now being spread across a broader range of speculative investments, while artificial intelligence has emerged as the latest technology trend attracting significant investor attention.
Michael Antonelli, a market strategist at Baird, told Bloomberg, “For the longest time, crypto was this hot investment that Silicon Valley and the institutions were all obsessed with — and AI displaced it,” and added, “It’s as simple as that: AI displaced it as the hot investment trend.”
Other cryptocurrencies decline along with Bitcoin
Other cryptocurrencies also slumped alongside Bitcoin. fell as much as 12.8 per cent on Friday to its lowest level since April 2025, while XRP, Solana and all fell more than five per cent.
Privacy tokens take a beating
Bloomberg reported that elsewhere in the , “privacy tokens” were taking a beating following reports of a possible security flaw in one of them, Zcash.
Zcash fell by more than half, marking its largest drop since May 2021 over a 24-hour period, while another token, Monero, declined by as much as 17 per cent.
Those coins had been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal crypto market since the sector began its downward trend in October. Part of their appeal stems from how they obfuscate transaction data on blockchain networks, making it more difficult to track the flow of crypto and identify buyers and sellers.
Until Wednesday, had been up nearly 20 per cent for the year. Its collapse came after a Gizmodo report that the project had taken emergency action on Wednesday after discovering a critical bug in its systems that would have allowed attackers to create new tokens at will.