Bitcoin’s brutal crash deepened Thursday as the price fell below $67,000, wiping out fortunes and shattering claims it was ‘digital gold’.
The world’s biggest cryptocurrency has now lost nearly half its value since peaking just above $126,000 in early October, leaving many small investors nursing heavy losses.
Bitcoin slipped as low as $67,675 on Thursday, its weakest level since November 2024, after breaking below the $70,000 mark and triggering another wave of selling.
The token is down 20 percent this week alone and off 47 percent from its peak just four months ago.
‘This steady selling in our view signals that traditional investors are losing interest, and overall pessimism about crypto is growing,’ Deutsche Bank analyst Marion Laboure said Wednesday in a note to clients.
When prices fall this fast, fortunes can vanish overnight - and some investors end up worse off than broke, having borrowed money to buy crypto and still owing cash even after their savings have been wiped out.
The slump has also hit some big Wall Street-listed companies that tied their fortunes directly to bitcoin.
One of the most exposed is Strategy, run by crypto evangelist Michael Saylor. Formerly known as MicroStrategy, the firm has spent the past five years piling into bitcoin and now holds nearly 713,000 tokens.
The company paid an average of about $76,000 per coin - roughly 13 percent higher than today’s price of around $67,000 - meaning its vast bitcoin stash is now sitting at a loss rather than a profit.
As a result, Strategy’s own share price has cratered too, sliding about 20 percent in just the past five days as bitcoin’s sell-off intensified.
Bitcoin was once promoted as a safe place to park money during inflation scares and global turmoil - similar to gold.
That promise has not held up. Instead, the cryptocurrency has largely moved in the same direction as risky assets like stocks, rising when markets are booming and falling when fear sets in.
Over the past 12 months, bitcoin - despite soaring in value in the summer and fall - is down nearly 29 percent, Google Finance data shows. Strategy is down an huge 67 percent over that period.
Gold has moved in the opposite direction, surging 69 percent over the same period as investors looked for safer places to put their money.
And the broader US stock market has continued to climb. The S&P 500, widely seen as the main barometer for American shares, is up nearly 13 percent over the same period.
Other major cryptocurrencies are tumbling too. Ether has dropped 23 percent this week, also its worst stretch since late 2022. Solana slid to $88.42 on Thursday, near a two-year low and down 24 percent this week alone.
Some traders say $70,000 was a crucial line in the sand for Bitcoin. Big round numbers often act as psychological support in markets.
Many people bought at that level, so when prices fall close to it, traders often try to prop it up by buying more in the hope of stopping further losses. That support has now cracked.
James Butterfill, head of research at Coinshares, warned that breaking it means more pain ahead.
‘$70,000 is shaping up as a key psychological level,’ he said, adding that ‘if we fail to hold it, a move toward the $60,000 to $65,000 range becomes quite likely.’
Another factor adding fuel to the crash is forced selling. When bitcoin hits certain price levels, trading platforms automatically sell positions to limit losses, which can cause prices to spiral lower.
More than $2 billion worth of crypto bets have been wiped out this week alone, according to Coinglass.
The crypto slump comes amid wider struggles on Wall Street for stocks and precious metals.
US tech shares have sold off sharply this week, while precious metals have turned volatile again, with silver plunging and gold pulling back after huge gains earlier this year.
Much of the selling is now coming from big players who were once seen as bitcoin’s strongest supporters.
These are large funds, banks and professional money managers who invest other people’s savings - including pensions and retirement accounts.
‘Institutional demand has reversed materially,’ CryptoQuant said in a report on Wednesday.
US bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which were buying around 46,000 bitcoin at this time last year, have turned into net sellers in 2026, the report found. CryptoQuant warned the latest slide points to ‘potential downside toward the $70K–$60K range’.
