Bitcoin fell to a new six-month low on Monday, extending its decline by several weeks as crypto sentiment continued to deteriorate.
After a slight rebound from overnight lows, BTC – in what has become a now familiar pattern – resumed its decline during the US session, falling to $92,500, down 2.4% over the past 24 hours and almost 13% over the past week. The largest crypto has now erased all of its 2025 gains and is down 27% from its all-time high just over a month ago. Ether has hovered above $3,000, down 2% over the past 24 hours and 15% over the past week.
Bearish sentiment spread to crypto-related stocks, with Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL), Gemini (GEMI), and Galaxy (GLXY) falling around 7%. Digital asset treasury-related companies continued their descent: Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, slipped 4% to its lowest level since October 2024, while ether treasury companies BitMine (BMNR) and ETHZilla fell 8% and 14%, respectively. Solana-related Upexi (UPXI) and Solana Company (HSDT) fell 10% and 7%, respectively.
Bitcoin miners tied to high-performance computing and AI infrastructure fared better after weeks of withdrawals. Hive Digital (HIVE) jumped 10% following news that its HPC subsidiary had entered into an AI cloud partnership with Dell Technologies. IREN (IREN) and Hut 8 (HUT) also saw modest gains.
Diminishing chances of a Fed rate cut
Due to the government shutdown, there haven’t been many official economic statistics for weeks, giving importance to otherwise little-followed reports.
Namely, this morning’s Empire State Manufacturing investigation from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This indicator unexpectedly jumped eight points to 18.7, well above analysts’ forecasts which predicted a drop to 6. This upward surprise should add to the growing arguments in favor of maintaining interest rates by the Fed at its next meeting in December, rather than reducing them, as previously expected by the markets.
Polymarket traders now assign a 55% probability that the federal funds rate will remain unchanged at the December meeting, while the CME FedWatch tool puts the probability of a pause slightly higher at around 60%.
CoinDesk senior analyst James Van Straten also pointed to a technical headwind. Bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) opened Sunday at $93,840, leaving a gap at $91,970 from April still unfilled – a level that could attract near-term downward pressure as bitcoin frequently revisits these gaps, he noted.
At the same time, Bitfinex analysts noted that the pace of realized losses is starting to stabilize, suggesting that Bitcoin may be approaching a local low, at least for a rebound.
“Over multiple historical cycles, sustainable lows have formed only after short-term holders capitulated to losses and not before,” the analysts said in a note shared with CoinDesk. “The market appears to be approaching this threshold again, with near-term resilience a function of whether this capitulation phase can exhaust remaining selling pressures.”
They added that this is now the third largest pullback since 2023 and the second since the launch of Bitcoin spot ETFs in the United States, arguing that a local bottom could form “relatively soon.”
Read more: Bitcoin Accumulation Amid Market Weakness? The sharp increase in the number of 1,000 BTC holders suggests this
