After hitting record highs last year, bitcoin has lost a bit of its luster.
The world’s most popular cryptocurrency saw its largest one-day drop in months on Tuesday (Feb. 25) amid a range of factors, including concerns about tariffs in the U.S. and the recent, record-breaking theft of $1.5 billion in ether currency from the Bybit exchange.
The price of bitcoin fell below $90,000 on Tuesday, its lowest level since November. The coin had exceeded $100,000 late last year, buoyed by optimism that the incoming Trump administration would relax regulations.
But as Reuters noted in a report Tuesday, other than the naming of crypto-friendly officials early in the administration, investors have had little in the way of concrete news on which to trade.
“The absence of new bullish catalysts — such as progress on crypto-friendly regulation or the approval of additional cryptocurrency ETFs — has kept prices range-bound in recent weeks,” Thomas Erdosi, head of product at CF Benchmarks, told Reuters.
There have been some movements toward crypto regulation in Congress recently. For example, an op-ed by two Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee said that Republicans in both houses of Congress would work with the Trump Administration and regulators to pass legislation for the digital assets and blockchain space.
“Effective legislation and proactive regulatory engagement will ensure good actors with innovative products can thrive in the U.S. and consumers are appropriately protected from rug pulls, market manipulation and other fraudulent activity,” the op-ed said.
The Reuters report also noted that investors have also been exiting bitcoin-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Data from LSEG shows the largest ETFs are poised for a net monthly outflow of about $644 million, the largest since the funds first launched a little over a year ago.
Meanwhile, Bybit said Monday (Feb. 24) it had restored its reserve to a 1:1 ratio within 72 hours of last week’s theft.
“Bybit fully backs all customer assets entrusted to our platform, maintaining a dynamic ratio of over 1:1,” Ben Zhou, the platform’s co-founder and CEO, said in a news release.
“We are fortunate to have all-weather friends in a cut-throat industry—our peers and even competitors stood with us during challenging times, and our customers deserve the same level of commitment,” he said.
