Crypto Market Wipeout Deepens as Bitcoin Sinks to Seven-Month Low

The cryptocurrency market’s dramatic downturn accelerated on Wednesday, with Bitcoin sliding to a seven-month low and pushing total losses across digital assets beyond the $1 trillion mark.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency dropped to $88,522, inflicting fresh pain on investors ranging from retail traders buying the dip to institutional digital asset firms whose valuations have been rapidly eroding.

A modest rebound followed after Nvidia delivered strong earnings, easing concerns that global spending on artificial intelligence might be cooling. Bitcoin climbed as much as 2.5% during Thursday’s Asian trading session. Traders are now watching key psychological thresholds near $85,000 and $80,000, while the 2025 low of $74,425 — a level reached during the April tariff unrest — looms large.

The total market value of cryptocurrencies, which peaked at $4.3 trillion on October 6, has slipped to roughly $3.2 trillion. Much of the decline, however, reflects paper losses rather than actual outflows of cash. Market fragility became apparent on October 10, when over $19 billion in leveraged crypto positions were forcibly liquidated, triggering a wave of claims and withdrawals from exchange platforms and halting the momentum of incoming buyers.

“Investors are moving a little bit blindly — they have no direction at the macroeconomic level, so all they can see is what the big investments are doing on the chain, and that’s quite worrying for them,” said James Butterfield, head of research at CoinShares, in comments reported by Bloomberg.

Bitcoin’s surge above $126,000 earlier this year had been fueled by expectations of multiple interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and a rising wave of institutional adoption. Both catalysts have since faded, prompting momentum-driven buyers to pull back. The downturn has landed particularly hard on digital asset management companies, whose valuations had been buoyed by the earlier rally.

Ether has also faltered, slipping below $3,000. After trailing Bitcoin through much of the first half of the year, the second-largest cryptocurrency reached $5,000 in August, even briefly topping its 2021 peak, but has since erased those gains.

“I think we are closer to the end of the sell-off than the beginning, but markets are volatile and cryptocurrencies may suffer further declines before they find a footing to recover,” said Matthew Hoogan, chief investment officer at San Francisco-based Bitwise Asset Management.

Bitcoin was last trading at $92,395 in Singapore.

By fLEXI tEAM