The price of bitcoin continued its monthslong slide Thursday, falling another 11% to $67,000, and is now worth less than it was when President Donald Trump was elected into his second term of office.
The original cryptocurrency, pitched as “digital gold,” has lost nearly half of its value since Oct. 6, when it hit a record high of $126,210.50, according to crypto trading platform Coinbase. As of 2 p.m. ET, the currency was trading at $66,301.
After the election of Trump in November of 2024, Bitcoin prices chugged higher for the better part of a year, in part due to investors’ expectations of a more crypto-friendly administration in Washington. But those gains have now been erased.
The sell-off appears to be a combination of investors pulling out of speculative assets like gold, silver and digital currencies, as well as a concern about the future of cryptocurrency regulation in Washington, despite Trump heavily backing cryptocurrency companies since his election.
The White House hosted banks and cryptocurrency companies at an event this week to see if there could be common ground on pending legislation that would regulate stablecoins.
The cryptocurrency industry wants to be able to pay customers for holding their deposits in crypto or stablecoins, a move that the banking industry would absolutely oppose. Banks believe cryptocurrency accounts providing a dividend or yield would take money out of the traditional banking system. Presently it appears the bill is not going to move forward in Congress.
One popular way of investing in bitcoin is through spot bitcoin ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, which allow investors to have a stake in bitcoin without directly owning the cryptocurrency. According to data from Morningstar Direct, investors pulled about $5.7 billion out of spot bitcoin ETFs from November through January.
Companies that enable investors to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, as well as the growing number of companies who have made investing in bitcoin their main business focus, have also been hit hard in the recent sell-off. Coinbase Global fell 9.1% and online trading platform Robinhood Markets lost 8.1%. Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms dropped 10%.
Strategy, the biggest of the so-called crypto treasury companies that raise money just to buy bitcoin, tumbled 13%. The company, formerly called MicroStrategy, reports on its website holdings of 713,502 bitcoin. With the average purchase price for those above $76,000, it means the company is under water on the investment. Thursday morning its bitcoin holdings were worth about $47.8 billion, less than the $54.3 billion Strategy says they cost.
