Macro Jitters Eclipse Crypto Fundamentals
Bitcoin has skid to roughly $91,500 — its weakest reading in six weeks and a full 27 percent below the record peak near $122,500 set in early October. The slide has erased hundreds of billions of dollars in digital-asset market value, but industry executives argue the pain stems from forces outside the blockchain ecosystem. Keith Grose, the United Kingdom chief at Coinbase, says the slump is “a broad risk-off rotation tied to AI-bubble worries, sticky inflation, and policy uncertainty,” not a loss of faith in crypto itself. He points to a widening retreat in high-growth tech shares — many of which share investors with Bitcoin — as evidence that capital is fleeing speculative corners of the market indiscriminately. In other words, the same investors who crowded into artificial-intelligence stocks earlier this year are now raising cash everywhere, pulling Bitcoin down in sympathy even as on-chain activity and developer engagement remain resilient.
Supporting that view, Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan calls the latest downturn “short-term noise.” He notes that Bitcoin processed more than $700 billion in on-chain settlement volume during the past month and that the Lightning Network’s capacity reached a record high last week — milestones that rarely coincide with a dying asset class. Hougan argues the cryptocurrency’s value proposition as a permissionless, censorship-resistant settlement layer is intact, even if its price is hostage to macro headwinds in the near term.
Institutions Build While Prices Bleed
Behind the negative headlines, large players continue to fortify market infrastructure. Coinbase itself is expanding its Manchester engineering hub, rolling out a GBP-denominated savings product aimed at risk-averse savers, and finalising plans to reincorporate in business-friendly Texas next quarter. Grose says the moves reflect a strategic bet that compliant, fiat-on-ramp services will shine once the macro dust settles. “We are building products that work in both boom and bust,” he says, highlighting regulatory approvals in the United Kingdom and a growing partnership roster with high-street banks.
Other pillars of institutional demand are also holding up. Open interest on regulated Chicago futures remains near its 2025 average despite the correction, indicating that professional traders have not abandoned the space. Meanwhile, European exchange-traded products saw net inflows of roughly €120 million over the past two weeks, suggesting dip-buying from wealth-management clients who view Bitcoin as a portfolio diversifier rather than a quick trade. These dynamics underscore a key difference from the 2022 “crypto winter”: the investor base is substantially deeper and more regulated today, providing a floor that retail capitulation alone cannot break.
Chart Signals Flash Caution, Yet Long-Term Structure Survives
From a technical standpoint the picture is fragile. Analyst Carolane De Palmas at ActivTrades emphasises that Bitcoin has fallen through its 50-week moving average and slipped into the weekly Ichimoku Cloud for the first time since early 2023, historically a zone of prolonged turbulence. Key downside checkpoints sit at $93,050, $85,435, and a psychologically important $80,560 — the latter marking the lower edge of the cloud. A breakdown below that area could open the door to a retest of the $72,000–$75,000 support band, where long-term holders built positions in the spring.
Still, internal metrics offer mixed hope. Dormant-coin activity remains low, implying long-term believers are not yet panicking, and the hash rate continues to grind higher, signalling miners’ confidence in future profitability. The next macro catalyst is the December Federal Reserve meeting, where traders will parse whether policymakers hint at liquidity easing in early 2026 or maintain a restrictive stance. Until then, thin holiday liquidity and an information vacuum could keep volatility elevated — but, as Grose puts it, “this is a recalibration, not a reversal.”
