Crypto asset prices slid on Thursday, building on Wednesday’s market-wide selloff spurred by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell disappointing investors with his comments on U.S. interest rate cut expectations for next year.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) attempt to bounce back above $100,000 quickly faded earlier during the day and slid to the low-$97,000s during the U.S. day. It modestly recovered to around $98,000 before another leg lower brought prices below $96,000, down 4.8% over the past 24 hours.
Altcoins fared much worse, with the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index diving more than 10% during the same period. Ethereum’s ether (ETH) dipped 10.8% to below $3,500, while Cardano’s ADA, Chainlink’s LINK, Aptos’ APT, Avalanche’s AVAX and Dogecoin’s DOGE all suffered 15%-20% losses. Notably, SOL sank to its weakest price since Nov. 7 — nearly erasing its post-election rally following a 26% plunge from its record high hit less than a month ago.
Over the past 24 hours — roughly since yesterday’s rate decision by Fed policy makers — nearly $1.2 billion worth of leveraged crypto derivatives trading positions have been liquidated across all assets, CoinGlass data shows. Over $1 billion of those were long positions, or bets that prices would rise.
In traditional markets, U.S. stock indexes slightly bounced from Wednesday’s lows but gave back part of the pre-market gains during the session. The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq were 0.5% up from the Wednesday close.
Crypto prices rose almost vertically since Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in early November, buoyed by hopes of pro-crypto policies from his incoming administration. Wednesday’s Fed projection of a slower pace of rate cuts for next year and Powell’s hawkish tone on rising inflation expectations caught many investors offside, triggering a broad-market selloff across crypto, equities and even gold.
The U.S. dollar index (DXY), a key strength gauge against a basket of foreign currencies, surged above 108, its strongest level since November 2022, while 10-year U.S. Treasury yields also rose sharply above 4.6%, the highest since May.
“The crypto market has already been on pins and needles around the possibility for a correction following the record run in the price of bitcoin through $100,000,” Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group, said in a Thursday note. “We got that catalyst from the world of traditional markets. … Fallout from Wednesday’s Fed decision was simply too much to ignore.”
