Things went from bad to worse for cryptocurrencies on Tuesday as a broad sell-off in the tech and financial sectors unfolds.
Bitcoin The U.S. was down 5% to $75,000 in early afternoon, just a few hundred dollars above last weekend’s lows. Ethereum’s Ethereum fell 6.5% to near $2,200, while Solana It fell below $100, down 5.5%.
Shopify (SHOP), Adobe (ADBE), Salesforce (CRM), Intuit (INTU) are just a few of the names that saw the broader market fall 7%-12% intraday. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) fell 5% today. The thematic fund is currently down 14% in just one week and is down nearly 28% from its October peak.
Private equity stocks also fell sharply today, with giants such as Blackstone (BX), Ares Capital (ARES), KKR (KKR) and Apollo (APO) all down 6%-10%.
The industry has been through a rough patch in recent months, with the recession accelerating after BlackRock private debt fund BlackRock TCP Capital (TCPC) filed a filing late on Friday (Jan. 23) saying it intended to cut its net asset value by 19%.
The news suggests that the economy may not be as smooth as the headlines suggest and that liquidity in the system may be tighter than people think.
Bitcoin is certainly not in a bull market yet at the time of the filing, but it’s not in panic mode either, having risen to levels around $91,000 earlier in the day. However, it has been pretty much plummeting since then.
Digital asset-related stocks also declined. Galaxy (GLXY) led the decline, falling 18% after the earnings report, while Strategy (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL), and Bullish (BLSH) fell 5%-7% intraday.
Cryptocurrency winter, but there’s good news
Matt Hougan, CIO of digital asset management company Bitwise, believes that the cryptocurrency market has been in a full-scale winter since January 2025, similar to past bear markets such as 2018 and 2022.
“This is not a ‘bull correction’ or a ‘down.’ This is a full-blown, 2022, Leonardo DiCaprio-style cryptocurrency winter in The Revenant,” he said in a report on Monday.
On a more positive note, Hogan said the secular bear market may be coming to an end. He noted that economic downturns typically last about 13 months. If, like Hougan, the start of the bear market is scheduled for January 2025 instead of October 2025, the cryptocurrency could bottom within weeks.
“As a veteran of multiple crypto winters, I can tell you that the end of these crypto winters felt a lot like now: hopelessness, desperation, and malaise,” he wrote.
