Bitcoin early on Friday dropped below $82,000 for the first time since mid-April, as the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency continued to be hit by a selloff that has tanked its price by around 25% since the start of November.
Key Facts
- Bitcoin’s price briefly dropped to $81,871.19 early on Friday before settling at around $82,460, falling around 10.2% in the past 24 hours.
- As a result of the nearly month-long selloff, bitcoin’s price is 10% below what it was at the start of the year, as it has wiped out a majority of the gains it made since President Donald Trump’s election win last year.
- Bitcoin last slipped below $82,000 in April—dropping as low as $75,000—amid a broader market selloff triggered by the sweeping tariffs announced by Trump at his so-called “Liberation Day” event.
- Citing data from Deribit, the Coinbase-owned crypto options and futures market, Coindesk reported that traders are readying for the token to drop further in price.
What About Other Cryptocurrency Prices?
The price of Ether—the world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap—dropped below $2,740, down more than 9.6% in the past 24 hours. Other major cryptocurrencies have also been hit, with the prices of XRP, Binance’s BNB and Solana’s SOL falling 9.1%, 8.4% and 10.6%, respectively, over the past day. Dogecoin, the biggest meme token in the crypto market, is down 10.3% in the past day.
What’s Behind The Selloff?
After hitting an all-time high early last month, the cryptocurrency market has been hit by a continued slump following a record single-day liquidation event on October 10. During a 24-hour period, $19.37 billion in leveraged positions were sold as President Donald Trump announced additional 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, which he’s since walked back. The prices of digital tokens have also been impacted by broader market volatility over the past few days, with CoinGlass reporting more than $2.2 billion in liquidations over the past 24 hours.
Big Number
$2.92 trillion. That is the total market cap of the entire cryptocurrency market, according to CoinGecko data. This is a 33% decline from a high of around $4.38 trillion at the start of October. Since the start of this month, bitcoin’s market cap has fallen by around 25%, which according to Bloomberg is the biggest single month decline since the crypto crash of 2022.
Tangent
Strategy, previously known as Microstrategy, whose stock was seen as a proxy for bitcoin because of the company’s large holdings of the cryptocurrency, is down 2.44% in premarket trading early on Friday, after dropping 11% over the past week and 41% in the past 30 days. The company presently holds 649,870 bitcoins at an average price of $74,430. In a note issued earlier this week, analysts at JPMorgan Chase warned that Strategy faces the risk of being dropped from key benchmark indexes such as the Nasdaq 100 and the MSCI USA. A delisting of Strategy from key indexes could cause its stock to slump further and potentially drive down crypto prices if the company chooses to liquidate some of its bitcoin holdings.
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This story was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
