Bitcoin Falls Below $80,000 as Investors Take Cover Ahead of the Fed
Trending Topics Jakob Steinschaden
Bitcoin slipped under $80,000, trading near $79,900 on Monday. Traders are bracing for the Fed, and crypto is getting hit while AI stocks also wobble.
Based on reporting by Trending Topics, Jakob Steinschaden — read the original for the full story.
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Bitcoin spent Monday below the $80,000 line, trading around $79,900 after briefly touching about $79,300 over the weekend. That is a clean break from the level traders had been watching, and it comes with a nastier mood heading into the Federal Reserve’s decision on Wednesday.
The broader crypto market is still under pressure. Bitcoin is down just over 3 percent over seven days, Ethereum has fallen 4.6 percent, and Cardano and Chainlink are both down between 5 and 7 percent. BNB and Zcash are the only names in the source table showing gains over the week.
There has also been real liquidation pain. CoinGlass says about $154 million in leveraged positions were wiped out over the last 24 hours, with $118 million of that on bets that prices would rise. That is lower than the washout seen on Saturday, when Bitcoin first slipped under $80,000, but it still shows how quickly the market is de-risking.
The Fed is the main event. CME FedWatch puts the chance of a rate hike at about 9 percent, so the market is not pricing in a surprise move this week. What traders seem to care about instead is the tone from the central bank and how clearly Kevin Warsh signals a December hike. Jeff Mei of BTSE says investors already look to be cutting risk, and he points to high oil prices, the Iran conflict and inflation as reasons the Fed could sound tougher than expected.
Crypto is not falling in a vacuum, either. Asian stock markets continued their sell-off in A.I. names, with South Korea’s Kospi down 1 percent after Goldman Sachs cut its target by 25 percent. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs ended last week with outflows on Thursday and Friday, though they still posted a weekly gain, while Ether ETFs logged a fourth straight week of outflows. The market’s mood has cooled fast, and the numbers are doing the talking.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what happens when a market spends months pretending liquidity is a personality trait. Crypto wants to act like a macro asset when rates are easy and a rebel coin when they are not, but the Fed still sets the weather. The funny part is that the worst arguments for “digital gold” usually arrive right when Bitcoin trades like a leveraged risk asset, which is exactly what is happening again.
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