(Bloomberg) -- The rout in Bitcoin worsened during Asian trading hours on Friday, sending the cryptocurrency down more than a quarter from the all-time high it set less than six weeks ago as traders dramatically reversed bets that followed the election of US President Donald Trump.
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The coin was down 5.5% at $79,627 at 12:05 p.m. in Singapore, after hitting its lowest level since November 10. That was part of a broad rout: Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, fell 7.3% while smaller tokens Solana and XRP were down 7.1% and 7.8%, respectively.
Read: Bitcoin’s Slide Has Traders Hedging Against a Drop to $70,000
The selloff underscores a swift change of fortunes for digital assets, which boomed after Trump’s election win. Bitcoin hit its all-time high of $109,241 on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, but it has tumbled since then amid worries about the president’s combative stance and broader concerns about the US economy.
“Given the macro environment, it’s not surprising to see we are where we are,” said Stefan von Haenisch, director of over-the-counter trading in Asia Pacific at crypto custody firm Bitgo Inc. Traders are still waiting for Trump, widely seen as supportive of crypto, to come up with concrete steps for the sector including a Bitcoin stockpile, he said.
The decline was part of a broad risk-off shift among investors in Asia, who dumped shares following Trump’s latest comments on tariffs. The US president said that 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico would come into force from March 4, while Chinese imports would face a further 10% levy. The MSCI AC Asia Pacific Index was around 2% lower.
Bearish sentiment this week has also hit spot US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, with investors pulling out more than $1 billion on Tuesday, the biggest one-day outflow since their debut last year.
Buying Bitcoin has been a popular ‘Trump trade’ following the US election. The president has said he wants to make the US “the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world,” and investors rushed to the coin after the November election on hopes he would make good on his word.
Traders are now being forced to consider quite how far the world’s biggest cryptocurrency can fall. There is support for the coin around $70,000, said Ruslan Lienkha, chief of markets at crypto platform YouHodler, pointing to technical analysis. But he said investors shouldn’t assume the rout in Bitcoin will get that bad.
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“We will only see this level if negative sentiment dominates the equity markets,“ said Lienkha.
Trump has already made a few key changes that have pleased crypto bulls. The president has put crypto advocates in key positions while the Securities and Exchange Commission, which embarked on a yearslong crackdown under former Chair Gary Gensler, has closed investigations into several crypto outfits in recent weeks.
(Updates throughout. An earlier version of this story corrected the date of decline.)
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