Crypto’s Tuesday went from bad to worse as a widespread selloff unfolded across the tech sector and financial sector.
Bitcoin The US fell 5% to $75,000 in the early afternoon hours, just a few hundred dollars above last weekend’s low. ethereum ether Solana falls 6.5% to near $2,200 Slipped below $100 with a decline of 5.5%.
Shopify (SHOP), Adobe (ADBE), Salesforce (CRM), Intuit (INTU) to name a few had broad declines of 7%-12% during the session. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) declined 5% today. The thematic fund is now down 14% in just one week and is down about 28% since its October peak.
Private-equity stocks also fell sharply today, with giants like Blackstone (BX), Ares Capital (ARES), KKR (KKR) and Apollo (APO) all showing losses of 6%-10%.
The sector has had a rough ride in recent months, with the bearish pace intensified after a Friday evening filing (January 23) by BlackRock’s private debt fund – BlackRock TCP Capital (TCPC) – said it intended to reduce the net value of its assets by 19%.
The news indicated that perhaps not everything is as good in the economy as the headlines might suggest, and liquidity conditions in the system may be tighter than thought.
Bitcoin certainly wasn’t in a bull market at the time of the filing, but it wasn’t in panic mode either, having surged to nearly $91,000 earlier that day. However, this has since largely straightened out.
A decline is being seen in stocks related to digital assets. Galaxy (GLXY) was in the red, falling 18% after its earnings, while Strategy& (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL), Bullish (BLSH) declined 5%-7% during the session.
Crypto winter, but there is good news
Matt Haugen, CIO of digital asset management firm Bitwise, argued that the crypto market is in a full-scale winter from January 2025, which is similar to previous bear markets like 2018 and 2022.
“This is not a ‘bull market correction’ or a ‘decline,'” he said in a note Monday.
More positive, Haugan said, is that the prolonged bear market may be nearing an end. He said recessions typically last about 13 months. If, as Hougan said, you put the start of the bear market in January 2025 instead of October 2025, the crypto is probably within a few weeks of the bottom.
“As a veteran of several crypto winters, I can tell you that the end of those crypto winters feels a lot like now: disappointment, frustration, and malaise,” he wrote.