Bitcoin fell below $60,000 for the first time since October 2024, extending its reversal from market darling after the re-election of US President Donald Trump to a casualty of a rapidly changing speculative landscape.
The largest cryptocurrency slumped as much as 6 per cent to $59,770 on Friday in New York trading hours. Bitcoin has lost more than half its value since reaching a peak above $126,000 in October last year and is now worth less than it was when crypto-friendly Trump retook the White House.
The latest leg lower was fuelled by a combination of investors pulling money from Bitcoin-tied exchange-traded funds, renewed geopolitical tensions and growing concerns about the durability of one of the market’s most important sources of demand.
Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc., which helped fuel the last bull market with its large-scale Bitcoin purchases, has become a focal point for growing concerns about the digital-asset treasury model after it disclosed a rare sale of the token this week.
The broader backdrop is becoming less favourable for the sector as well. For much of the past decade, cryptocurrencies occupied a privileged place in the risk-taking economy.
Today, money that once flowed almost automatically into crypto is being dispersed across a wider set of speculative assets, while artificial intelligence pulls focus as the newest technological commodity.
“For the longest time, crypto was this hot investment that Silicon Valley and the institutions were all obsessed with — and AI displaced it,” Michael Antonelli, market strategist at Baird, said by phone. “It’s as simple as that: AI displaced it as the hot investment trend.”
AI stocks have become the market’s dominant growth trade, diminishing Bitcoin’s appeal. Elsewhere, retail investors are pouring money into short-dated options and prediction markets, and even among digital assets, stablecoins and so-called perpetual futures are attracting attention that in previous cycles would likely have flowed into Bitcoin.
Smaller cryptocurrencies also slumped lower alongside Bitcoin on Friday. Ether fell as much as 12.8 per cent on Friday to its lowest level since April 2025, while XRP, Solana and Dogecoin all fell more than 5 per cent.
The Trump effect
The downturn is unfolding at what should have been a triumphant moment for the crypto industry.
The Trump administration has helped crypto secure many of the victories the industry spent nearly a decade pursuing: a sympathetic president, friendlier regulators, institutional acceptance and a legislative framework that increasingly treats digital assets as a permanent part of the financial system.
Yet rather than unleashing a new wave of demand, those milestones have coincided with one of Bitcoin’s deepest retreats in years.
Bitcoin’s all-time high came days before the crypto market entered an extended selloff, powered by billions of dollars in liquidated bets that made the market fragile. The conflict in Iran worsened investor appetite for risky assets, leaving Bitcoin out in the cold while stocks soared on AI’s advances.
Meanwhile, renewed inflation concerns have benefited gold more than Bitcoin — undermining its status as an inflation hedge. The promise of institutional adoption has given way to questions about whether the largest buyers can continue expanding their positions at the pace investors once expected.
“If gold is competing with the US dollar, then Bitcoin is effectively competing with global liquidity,” said Dean Chen, analyst at crypto exchange Bitunix. “When markets increasingly believe that higher interest rates will persist for longer and that the cost of capital will remain elevated, investors naturally reduce allocations to non-yielding assets.”
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Published on June 6, 2026
