Bitcoin continued its decline on Thursday, touching its lowest levels since November, trading as low as $92,500.
The cryptocurrency’s recent decline comes after it climbed to record highs following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in early November. It first crossed the $100,000 mark in early December, and later eclipsed $108,000. The rise of the world’s largest cryptocurrency has also fueled a surge in crypto-related stocks.
Trump is seen as a boon for the crypto industry, which has been under heavy scrutiny by the Gary Gensler-led Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during the Biden administration as the agency sought to mitigate fraud related to the sector, SEEbiz reports. Gensler announced plans in November to step down this month.
The new US president said in December that he would nominate crypto-friendly Paul Atkins to head the US Securities and Exchange Commission, replacing Gensler.
Trump also pledged to create a new White House role for a “crypto czar” to oversee bitcoin policy, appointing former PayPal ( PYPL ) CEO David Sacks to the position.
Anthony Scaramucci, a crypto investor who served in Trump’s first administration, warned that investors should not get too excited about any immediate changes to what will be the most pro-crypto Congress in history.
“I would just warn people, if you think that on January 20th the switch is going to flip and everything is going to be better and roses for bitcoin and the digital assets community, that’s just not the way Washington works,” he told Yahoo Finance in December.
As Yahoo Finance’s David Hollerith reported in late 2024, bulls don’t see an end to the rally anytime soon. Meanwhile, skeptics warn that the cryptocurrency’s rapid growth over the past year could result in another crash like the one in 2022.
But in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration, the crypto rally eased a bit. Bitcoin is down about 6% from its seven-day high, starting Monday’s slide as US economic data fueled inflation concerns. Investors pulled more than $580 million from U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded funds on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.
Crypto-related stocks largely mirrored bitcoin’s decline. MicroStrategy ( MSTR ), a bitcoin holding company, has fallen 12.7% since Monday, when shares jumped at the start of the week. Coinbase (COIN) is down 9.6% in that time frame.
