Bitcoin marked its first weekly decline since Donald Trump’s election victory as the Federal Reserve’s cautious policy outlook tempered optimism over the president-elect’s embrace of the crypto sector.
The largest digital asset was down more than 7% for the seven-day period through 9:27am Monday in Singapore, the biggest such drop since September. A wider crypto market gauge, encompassing smaller tokens such as Ether and meme-crowd favorite Dogecoin, suffered a sharper decline of about 10%.
The Fed on Wednesday delivered a third straight interest-rate cut while signaling a slower pace of monetary easing next year to keep inflation in check, sending global stocks into a tailspin. The hawkish pivot also damped the speculative spirits unleashed in the crypto market by Trump’s pledge of friendly regulations and his backing for a national Bitcoin stockpile. A record outflow from US exchange traded funds investing directly in Bitcoin last week will weigh on prices in the near term, said Sean McNulty, director of trading at liquidity provider Arbelos Markets.
“We should hold the $90,000 level for Bitcoin into the year end, but if we break below that could trigger further liquidations,” McNulty said adding that “meaningful downside hedging” was seen in the options market last week with large buyers for January, February and March puts in $75,000 to $80,000 strikes.
The original cryptocurrency changed hands at about $94,344, nearly $14,000 below the record high set on December 17. The token is up nearly 37% since the presidential election on November 5.
Choppy price action near term ahead of a “bullish trajectory” into the first quarter of 2025 is still the “most likely scenario,” David Lawant, head of research at crypto prime broker FalconX, wrote in a note.
Lawant said a “low-liquidity environment may bring more volatility as we enter into the final days of the year, especially because on December 27 crypto is likely going to see the biggest options expiry event of its history.”
All eyes are on whether leveraged Bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy Inc, the former dot-com-era software maker, continues its weekly buys of the largest cryptocurrency into US Monday and hits the next price trigger, traders said.