Bitcoin continued to decline on Tuesday in US hours, falling below $102,000 and clearing the lows from the October 10 crash.
The largest crypto plunged 4.5% over the past 24 hours and 11.8% over the past seven days to hit nearly $101,900, its lowest level since late June.
Ethereum Ether also fell below the crash low, at around $3,410, the lowest in three months and down almost 6% today. BNB the GROUND of Solana , and Cardano’s ADA decreased by 5-7% during the same period. The entire group is down 15-20% over the past week.
Crypto-related stocks have not been spared either. Strategy (MSTR), the largest BTC owner, fell another 5% to its lowest price since April. Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) and digital asset investment firm Galaxy (GLXY) declined by similar amounts.
Investor confidence has deteriorated alongside price developments. The widely followed sentiment indicator, the Fear & Greed Index, fell to 21, indicating “extreme fear” in the market. This is the most depressed reading on the metric since early April, when BTC fell below $75,000 during the tariff crisis.
The collapse of the Bitcoin cash bubble continues to reverberate, with former BTC accumulators starting to turn sellers. Paris-based Sequans announced the sale of 970 BTC on Tuesday to help repay previously accumulated debt.
Inflection point
While bitcoin has fallen nearly 20% from its all-time high of $126,000 less than a month ago, the market is at a crucial inflection point, Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33, said in a Tuesday note.
“BTC has closed above $100,000 for 180 consecutive trading days, but is now getting dangerously close to this psychologically important price level,” he wrote.
He argued that the current price action is typical of the consolidations that followed the major liquidation events of recent years – “slow, heavy and desperately unstable.” However, the research firm’s proprietary derivatives signals resemble both past bottoming patterns and early bear market regimes of late April and mid-December 2021, he added.
Amid mixed signals, Lunde suggested it was too early to call Oct. 6 a market top. Positive catalysts – such as expected monetary easing, the potential opening of retirement accounts for crypto, growing institutional participation and easing of regulation – do not yet support the idea of a cyclical peak, he said.
“Our outlook remains optimistic, but we will take an agile approach if the structure materializes further downward.” he said.
UPDATE (November 4, 4:40 p.m. UTC): Adds an analyst comment.
