Bitcoin the rapid fall to $84,000 in the morning in the United States on Thursday was accompanied by equally rapid declines in stocks and precious metals.
But while stocks, gold and silver have since rebounded to their worst levels, crypto remains near its session lows, along with BTC, ether. XRP and Solana all down 5 to 7% in the last 24 hours.
“Everything from weak financial results to concerns over Iran and government shutdowns are causing a sell-off,” said Joshua Lim, global co-head of markets at prime broker FalconX. “This triggers a larger unwinding of hedge funds and commodity trading advisors’ consensus positions in metals and stocks.”
“And crypto also suffers from the general sentiment of risk aversion,” he added.
Thursday’s sell-off triggered more than $650 million in liquidations of bullish leveraged positions betting on higher prices across all crypto assets, according to CoinGlass data, the second most violent wave in the past month.
Funding Rates Suggest Fund Formation
Perpetual swap funding rates – a key indicator of market froth – have now turned bearish on major tokens, notably for ETH, SOL and XRP. In perpetual futures contracts, which have expiration dates, funding rates are periodic payments exchanged between traders based on the difference between the perpetual contract price and the spot price.
When funding turns negative, it means that short sellers (those betting on lower prices) are paying long positions (those betting on a rebound) to maintain their positions, indicating that the majority of traders are bearish.
Historically, persistent negative funding rates often preceded short-term bottoms, as overly saturated short positions became vulnerable to sudden price reversals.
Some key levels
US spot Bitcoin ETF buyers have an overall cost close to $84,099, just below the current price of $84,400. Meanwhile, the actual average market price, a long-term fair value derived from the investor’s capitalization divided by active supply, sits just above $80,000. This $80,000 closely matches the November 2025 low, making it a key structural support area and a potential point of mean reversion.
However, a sustained break below $80,000 would likely open the door to a retest of April 2025 levels, when bitcoin briefly fell to around $76,000 amid the sell-off triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign.
How serious is it and what could change things
January isn’t over yet, but Bitcoin is on pace to post its fourth consecutive monthly loss – which is very remarkable considering BTC hasn’t declined for four straight months, even amid its 80% drop during the crypto winter of 2022. You’d have to go back to 2019 to find a streak of four consecutive lower monthly candles for Bitcoin.
“The stock market has been focused on AI infrastructure trading, supported by deregulation and tax benefits taking effect this year,” said Mark Connors, chief investment officer at Risk Dimensions. “This has eclipsed BTC, as well as the gold and BTC standard pattern we saw in 2020. I believe BTC will not move forward until we have a ‘print’ by the US.”
