Cryptocurrencies fell sharply on Monday, bringing fresh momentum to a wide-ranging selloff that appeared to have settled.
Bitcoin price slid as much as 7% to below $85,000 in early New York trading, before paring the decline. Ether dropped around 7% to below $2,800, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Most tokens followed a similar pattern, with Solana falling around 8%.
The crypto market is on shaky ground after a weeks-long selloff that began when some $19 billion in levered bets were wiped out in early October, just days after Bitcoin set an all-time high of $126,251. The OG cryptocurrency shed 17% of its value in November, but a let-up in the selling pressure saw it regain ground last week, rising to above $90,000.
Traders are now bracing for bigger slides in bitcoin prices.
“It’s a risk off start to December,” Sean McNulty, APAC derivatives trading lead at FalconX, told Bloomberg News. “The biggest concern is the meagre inflows into Bitcoin exchange traded funds and absence of dip buyers. We expect the structural headwinds to continue this month. We are watching $80,000 on Bitcoin as the next key support level.”
Digital assets also felt the broader macroeconomic shifts rippling through global markets, as equity traders in the US start the week on the backfoot. Japanese stocks fell and the yen rose as Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda sent the clearest hint yet of a rate hike this month.
“At the macro level, rising Japanese government bond yields added further downside pressure, as investors assessed the potential acceleration of the yen carry-trade unwind, a dynamic that historically weighs on global risk assets, including crypto,” said Jeff Ko, chief analyst at CoinEx.
On Monday, Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc. said it had created a $1.4 billion reserve to fund future dividend and interest payments, tempering concern that the Bitcoin accumulator may be forced to sell some of its roughly $56 billion cryptocurrency haul if token prices continue to fall.
Meanwhile, US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in a modest $70 million last week, after roughly $4.6 billion in outflows over the past month, Bloomberg data show. Most of the pressure has come from the iShares Bitcoin Trust, where investors have pulled money for five straight weeks, the longest withdrawal streak since the fund launched in January 2024.
The week ahead is set to offer a crucial snapshot of US economic momentum as policymakers weigh the trajectory of interest rates heading into 2026. Data is likely to shape expectations for whether the US Federal Reserve continues its rate-cutting cycle. US President Donald Trump on Sunday said he had decided on his pick for the next Fed chair, after making clear he expects his nominee to deliver interest-rate cuts.
Investors were also digesting comments from Strategy Inc. Chief Executive Officer Phong Le, who said on a podcast on Friday that the Bitcoin-buyer could sell the token if its mNAV—a ratio of enterprise value to Bitcoin holdings—turned negative. “We can sell Bitcoin and we would sell Bitcoin if we needed to fund our dividend payments below 1x mNAV,” he said, adding that it would be a last resort. Strategy, which has a $56 billion Bitcoin stockpile, has seen its mNAV tumble to 1.19, according to its website.
Meanwhile, S&P Global Ratings last week downgraded an assessment of the stability of USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin, to its lowest rating, warning that a drop in Bitcoin’s value could leave the token undercollateralized. Further uncertainty came from the People’s Bank of China, which on Saturday issued a warning about the risks of virtual currencies including stablecoins, adding that government agencies should deepen coordination to crack down on illegal activities.
CoinEx’s Ko said that “a series of bearish developments over the weekend,” including the USDT downgrade and PBOC warning, had renewed the pressure on cryptocurrencies.
