The drop comes amid doubts about future interest rate cuts in the United States and a risk-off sentiment in broader markets.
Posted on November 18, 2025
Bitcoin fell below $90,000 for the first time in seven months, in the latest sign that investors' appetite for risk is drying up in financial markets.
The cryptocurrency began to recover when the US markets opened on Tuesday. However, Monday's sharp decline in the risk-sensitive asset had already erased all of its gains for the year.
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It is now almost 30 percent below its high of $126,000 in October.
It fell 0.5 percent to $91,338.47 during European trading hours, after falling as low as $89,286.75.
Around $1.2 trillion has been wiped off the total market value of all cryptocurrencies in the past six weeks, according to market tracker CoinGecko.
Market participants said a combination of doubts about future interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve and risk-off sentiment in broader markets, which have faltered after a long rally, were dragging down cryptocurrencies.
“The cascading sell-off is amplified by listed companies and institutions exiting their positions after accumulating during the rally, compounding contagion risks across the market,” said Joshua Chu, co-chairman of the Hong Kong Web3 Association.
“When support wanes and macroeconomic uncertainty increases, confidence can erode at a remarkable speed.”
Speculators who had poured money into cryptocurrencies in hopes of supportive U.S. regulation have begun to pull back, prompting steady outflows from exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and similar instruments in recent weeks, said Joseph Edwards of Enigma Securities.
“The selling pressure here is not extraordinary, but it hits a relatively soft spot on the buy side…many retail buyers were hit during the flash crash last month,” he said, referring to an October crash that saw liquidations of $19 billion in leveraged positions.
Cryptocurrency accumulators like Strategy, miners like Riot Platforms and Mara Holdings, and the Coinbase exchange have fallen into sour moods.
'Submarine'
This year there has been a boom in public cryptocurrency treasury companies, and small companies in unrelated sectors have become crypto representatives by announcing plans to buy and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.
But Standard Chartered has estimated that a drop below $90,000 for Bitcoin could leave half of these companies' Bitcoin holdings “underwater,” a term that typically refers to assets that are worth less than what was paid for them.
Listed companies collectively own 4 percent of all Bitcoin in circulation and 3.1 percent of ether, Standard Chartered said.
The cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) has also been under pressure for months and has lost almost 40 percent of its value from an August high of over $4,955.
“Overall, sentiment in crypto is pretty low and has been since the demise of leverage in October,” said Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at Astronaut Capital.
