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Bitcoin Drops 40% in Four Months. Bloomberg Blames Absence of Buyers and Belief (yahoo.com) 153

Posted by EditorDavid from the number-go-down dept.
October saw Bitcoin reach $123,742. But less than four months later, "The world's largest cryptocurrency slipped below $76,000..." Bloomberg reports, "dropping about 40% from its 2025 peak..."

"What began as a sharp crash in October has morphed into something more corrosive: a selloff shaped not by panic, but by absence of buyers, momentum and belief." Unlike the October drawdown, there's been no obvious spark, cascading liquidations or systemic shock — just fading demand, thinning liquidity, and a token that's untethered to broader markets. Bitcoin has failed to respond to geopolitical stress, dollar weakness, or risk rallies. Even during gold and silver's violent swings in recent weeks, crypto saw no rotation. Bitcoin fell nearly 11% in January, marking its fourth straight monthly decline — the longest losing streak since 2018, during the crash that followed the 2017 boom in initial coin offerings...

Even more striking than the drop itself is the relative lack of optimism around it on social media. In a space known for relentless bravado and "number go up" memes, Bitcoin's slide has been met with little cheerleading or dip-buying fanfare... [Despite legislative wins and some institutional investments] Many investors say that optimism was front-run. Prices rallied early — and then stalled. Meanwhile, spot ETFs continue to bleed, a sign of weakening conviction among mainstream buyers — many of whom are now underwater after buying at higher prices.
On Thursday, Bitcoin closed at 88,228. By Sunday it had plunged another 13%, to $76,790...
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Bitcoin Drops 40% in Four Months. Bloomberg Blames Absence of Buyers and Belief More

Bitcoin Drops 40% in Four Months. Bloomberg Blames Absence of Buyers and Belief

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  • Good... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday February 01, 2026 @05:57PM (#65963014) Journal
    We need the energy that's being wasted on blockchain calculations to run AI models instead, to herald in a golden future!
    • It'll be back. Way too many people losing their money for crypto to ever go away.
      • I blame the loss on all the crypto fanboys switching to hype AI instead.

      • But what's the price of a tulip today, when compared to tulip mania time? :)

    • If we had a meme coin based on irony, you'd be rich.

      • Best not to put any money in precious metals, especially irony. They have all had a bad week.

        • Take a look at some of the other threads on this story. There are people saying physical silver is a great "store of wealth" for when the global financial system collapses. It's a mindset that I have a hard time comprehending.

    • Re: Good... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Bitcoin is a pump and dump currency with no securities or backings.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guignol ( 159087 )
        It can still be useful as an apocalypse detector, as the only way it seems so far for this thing to collapse is that it would cease to be true that a sucker is born every minute
        I am thinking it could be linked to an end of the world scenario with the hall of souls starting to dry up like in that movie.. (seventh sign I think), you get the idea :)

  • It would have dropped even faster, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by leonbev ( 111395 ) on Sunday February 01, 2026 @05:59PM (#65963018) Journal

    Michael Saylor and Strategy have been buying up a lot of Bitcoin on it's way down. This wasn't a trivial amount, either... we're talking tens of thousands of Bitcoin for tens of millions of dollars. It will be interesting to see what the bankers who lended him the money to buy that crypto will do if Bitcoin drops even further and they start showing huge losses.

    • Re: It would have dropped even faster, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by klipclop ( 6724090 ) on Sunday February 01, 2026 @06:08PM (#65963044)
      I don't know enough, but I believe he has a bunch of cash set aside to buy, and a seperate pool of funds to pay distributions. He can't be margin called since he issued debt to fund things. The big bet is how much will BTC crash, and how long before the next bull market? If you can get the timing right just a little, you'll be able to make a lot of money!

      • Re: It would have dropped even faster, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Sunday February 01, 2026 @07:11PM (#65963164)

        It's basically a derivative market he's created. You buy his coins which are tied to the price of BTC, but aren't BTC. It's effectively a stablecoin using BTC as the base currency.

        He's basically letting you buy shares in BTC in the end - you own a bit of the company which owns BTC as an asset, therefore you own a bit of that BTC asset.

        The problem is the price of each share is also tied to the cost of each asset and it's been trending downwards to keep the share price per BTC constant.

        You can figure it out from there - you can own something priced like BTC but isn't BTC!

    • According to this, https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com], microstrategy is still 5% above aggregate purchase price, so still ahead. Although any more than another 5% drop would put them in the red.
      • Apparently dipped in the red on Monday morning. I am seeing more "hype" stories which may bring it back a while longer. Although the slow trajectory downward is likely to continue. As I said somewhere else, AI is the new kid on the block where the frenzy is. crypto is so yesterday.

    • Michael Saylor and Strategy have been buying up a lot of Bitcoin on it's way down. This wasn't a trivial amount, either... we're talking tens of thousands of Bitcoin for tens of millions of dollars. It will be interesting to see what the bankers who lended him the money to buy that crypto will do if Bitcoin drops even further and they start showing huge losses.

      As a taxpayer, I find nothing interesting about an entity claiming they're Too Big To Fail.

      Not a fucking thing.

  • BTC is crappy design (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Plugh ( 27537 ) on Sunday February 01, 2026 @06:02PM (#65963024) Homepage
    Not scalable. Very slow low bandwidth. Expensive to use. Not actually encrypted nor anonymous; actually a privacy nightmare mich worse than credit cards. Other crypto solved these problems. Not crappy BTC. Everybody buys drugs with superior fintech these days.

    • What's better from a privacy perspective? I've seen monero recommended but not sure if there are other better coins. It's hard to find exchanges that will allow the purchase of monero with normal currency. There are also swap exchanges, but I'm not sure how hard they are to use.

      • https://www.getmonero.org/libr... [getmonero.org] Also if you have monero you are buying real world illegal stuff with it. So why would you need it on an exchange? That's like registering as a person of interest.

        • I fail to see how a whitepaper on monero generally is responsive to my post.

          Swap exchanges allow someone to swap bitcoin for monero, for example. This works if one can't find a way to purchase monero with regular currency. Purchase bitcoin with regular currency, then swap for monero.

  • LOL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Sunday February 01, 2026 @06:02PM (#65963026)

    But less than four months later ...

    Imagine having $100 in your wallet. Four months later you go into a store to buy something and you are told that your money is only worth $50 now. That is why cryptocurrency is useless bullshit.

    • Go ask people who bought silver near all time highs before Friday's epic selloff.
      • Thats fine but the difference is that silver is an actual thing with a measurable quantity.

        • Silver is similar to bitcoin in the sense that both are used as speculative assets. By contrast, bonds have a contractual rate of return, and equities are shares in productive companies with earnings.

          • Re: LOL (Score:4, Informative)

            by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Sunday February 01, 2026 @06:41PM (#65963098)

            Silver hasn't been a good speculative asset in over 60 years. Expand the kitco chart to max and look. Big spikes in the 80s, 2008-2012, and now. That's the behaviour of a hedge, a store of wealth.

            • What use is a "store of wealth" with an inflation indexed price that is both really volatile and shows no positive trendline?
              https://www.macrotrends.net/1470/historical-silver-prices-100-year-chart [macrotrends.net]

              Equities are volatile, but at least they have a consistent return above inflation. Inflation indexed bonds have a guaranteed positive return and aren't volatile. What use is silver?

              • I'm not sure you understand the concept of a store of wealth. If you turn a currency into, say, silver, then the currency can do whatever it likes. It can collapse and vanish. Eventually a new means of trading will emerge. It might be another currency. It might even be the store itself. But regardless, then your wealth has survived the collapse.

                You just need to be confident the thing will remain valued. Gold and silver have been continuously valued for a very, very, very long time.

                So I do not understand you

              • Oh, I think I get it. You're arguing while agreeing with me. Yes, silver not a good investment strategy, But you do not hold a store of wealth for returns. You hold it to protect it. You hold it when you don't trust the alternatives. If you think it'll outperform a stable market, it won't. But that's why you flee to it - to escape the unstable market.

                I would argue that just holding shares in silver isn't aren't a great way to hold wealth either. It's a compromise. You don't need to house, secure, and transa

                • Silver seems too volatile to reliably protect wealth.

                  What are you using silver to protect your wealth from? "Unstable markets" doesn't seem to fully describe what you're after, maybe global financial collapse is more apt. Would silver even work in such a scenario? I'm thinking non-perishable food, arable land, reliable manual tools, guns, and ammo might do better in that kind of situation.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dfghjk ( 711126 )

            Silver is a resource with inherent worth.

            • So is a cubic foot of dirt, I suppose. What is the expected return on silver, and how do you arrive at the number?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by cusco ( 717999 )

                Dirt's the better bet, even if the market for it crashes you can still live on a piece of property. And as my dad said, "They're not making any more land, except in Hawaii and Holland."

              • Silver has a use in jewelry, as a catalyst, is the best electrical conductor of all metals, used in LED diods, DVDs, CDs, photovoltaic cells, film photography, medicines, and probably many other usages I don't know.
                For medical use see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                • If commodity materials with industrial uses are generally good investments, I think copper is more widely used than silver. Should I invest in copper?

          • There's another similarity - they're both indications of waste. Silver's industrial use is far more important than its use as decoration or a way to store value. The power wasted to calculate cryptocurrency is also better used by productive industry.
          • Silver has an intrinsic value beyond jewelry. This is a nerd site and I'd expect those here to understand just how much silver gets used in electronics. Gold for low level signals silver for higher as just one use. Imagine a world without it. https://www.te.com/en/products... [te.com]

            • If something having industrial use makes it a good investment, shouldn't the recommendation be to invest in something more widely used like copper, or hell, even oil?

              • Supply/demand thing. Silver is relatively rare, and demand industrial is tepid, so it keeps price in check. Palladium and platinum are much rarer and are industrial small qty as well. They are much pricier due to rarity. And palladium like silver ends up in contacts too in some cases.

                Copper on the other hand is not rare nor is oil. Demand for both is anything but tepid.

      • Yes, silver had an epic selloff in one day. The last 30 days saw silver go from 71.02 to 78.53. Epic. If you view it as an investor and not a day-trader, the price of silver is too high. Selling is an obvious and prudent choice.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luthair ( 847766 )
        Thats why we don't use the gold standard.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by schwit1 ( 797399 )

          We should use the gold standard or something like it. Something that would stop the government from wildly printing money.

    • Worse, imagine having $10 in BTC. You order a pizza with it. Ten years later it turns out the pizza cost you a million dollars.

      So you're like, "Crap, I should've held onto that. Maybe I should buy some now." You buy a million dollars' worth of BTC. Ten years later, it is worth almost enough to allow you to order another pizza.

      • Worse, imagine having $10 in BTC. You order a pizza with it. Ten years later it turns out the pizza cost you a million dollars.

        So you're like, "Crap, I should've held onto that. Maybe I should buy some now." You buy a million dollars' worth of BTC. Ten years later, it is worth almost enough to allow you to order another pizza.

        Heh. Now *that* would be some buyers remorse!

    • Boyyyyy let me explain inflation to you.

    • That is why cryptocurrency is useless bullshit.

      $100 in USDC is worth the same today as it was four months ago. Next argument, please.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Astonishing for a currency that can only deflate.

  • Liquidity was always a huge problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday February 01, 2026 @06:06PM (#65963038)
    A lot of people have lost their shirts. Meanwhile with Trump as president there's basically no money laundering laws being enforced. So why bother going to the trouble of using crypto to launder your money? And at the end of the day money laundering is the killer app for cryptocurrency.

  • So basic economics of supply and demand?

    Way to go Bloomberg... Right on the forefront

    • Yes, the concept of supply and demand is pretty basic, but it takes on some interesting nuance I think with BTC. BTC is, ostensibly, a currency. But it's a currency that can only buy a limited number of things UNLESS you can get someone else to purchase it from you to convert it into dollars or another currency. That's not likely to happen with any other currency or even stocks/bonds. So you can end up holding a currency that you cannot spend on things you need to buy.

  • eventually the public wisens up then you need to find a new one.
  • Hey, when you've got a lock on data center facilities including electrical power and water, your "belief" can quickly change when something more lucrative than cryptocurrency comes along.
  • I had a couple of million, so I bought NFTs, got out of that with a million left and started riding the Bitcoin wave, got out of that and I hereby declare I am putting all my 10 grand into OpenAI.

    You read it here first, folks.

    • I laugh at you all!

      A Nigerian prince has contacted me and advised me that I now own ONE BILLION BTC which is being kept in a chest in that nation's treasury. All I have to do is send him 4Kg of gold to cover the costs of the paperwork and all that BTC will be *mine!!

      Those of you who speculate on crypto and precious metals are all fools -- only *I* am onto a sure thing.

      I shall laugh at you and ridicule you when my container-load of BTC is delivered next week. Hang on, apparently another 1Kg of gold is req

  • Crypto appealed to a lot of peoples greed when they thought there was tremendous upside to buying. That upside idea has really diminished if not evaporated, even as stagnant store of value bitcoin is very unappealing. It is a crap method for payments and has no intrinsic value. Even for criminal purposes it is getting dicey as the authorities are much better at tracing it now, even through tumblers and the various worldwide agreements on sharing tax information means it is not a good way to dodge tax either
  • I mean, when in all of history has there been a giant boom in a financial asset based solely on people's belief that the asset will always increase in value?! And don't give me any of that nerd shit like "history books"! Also give it to me in the past, just before the market started dipping, so I could cash out... please? (Is that the right word?) I'm losing everything here!

  • Investment and Gambling (Score:3)

    by hadleyburg ( 823868 ) on Sunday February 01, 2026 @08:41PM (#65963320)

    There's a fine line between investment and gambling.

    Investment is usually used to refer to putting money into some sort of industry. You can determine whether the industry is producing something of potential value.
    Gambling is more of a chance affair.

    The value of Bitcoin is not related to production of value, as such. Its related to how other people perceive the validity of bitcoin as a currency. It's inheriently more volatile.

    • There's a fine line between investment and gambling.

      Speculation.

    • While I'm not rooting for any particular individual's failure, I can't say that I'm sad to watch this thing go crazy.

      Lately, part of my routine is looking at a couple of the on-chain metrics.

      "Percent Addresses in Profit" shows how many addresses, at the current valuation, are net positive. Right now it's ~75%. But what's fun is looking at the ups and downs - because people buy in the expectation that it'll keep going up, the exact same price point as we had earlier in the year shows a lower number of to

    • Both, done right, involve a degree of skill (e.g. poker). Bitcoin, like gold, pays no interest or dividend. Any return from purchasing bitcoin (or gold) is the result of finding a greater fool [wikipedia.org] to buy it from you.

      • I think the big difference between BC and gold is that there's probably at least one person here who works for a company that needs to buy gold in order to make something others will buy and use, representing actual productive use.
      • there are multiple classes of gambling, While poker is skill based, the majority are chance based and bitcoin definitely falls on the chance based side of gambling as you are hoping that more fools enter the market than leave the market. Gold and Silver both have intrinsic underlying value due to their use in everything from jewelry, electronics, medicines and a thousand other critical components that are used every day due to the unique properties of gold and silver, Bitcoin has zero value outside being a
    • Not only is it not related to the production of value, it eats resources that could be used productively. It represents a net drain on the economy, and I think GDP numbers should be adjusted accordingly.

  • That is the one. Any good scam needs believers. When they realize what they are actually "investing" in, the scam ends.

  • Bitcoin never did anything, it was always a collectible.

    Every pricing bubble and many marketing scams depend on the one idea: There's a bigger idiot around the proverbial corner. One day, there isn't. It seems that day is near, for bitcoin.

  • What you don't understand is whose value this is storing. Microstrategy, Trump BS and other major holders have massively inflated the price of bitcoin.

    With major banks buying gold constantly there's a flight to safety as risfts in the financial system cause cracks and Bitcoin is still a small asset class. It will and it has drop like the rest.

    With the help of the masses we have created exit liquidity for BTC, Silver & Gold...so the selling began.

    With deleveraging in Bitcoin and some sour grapes ev

  • Less Bitcoin is bought because there are fewer buyers. Who would have thought?!

  • W/O gullible buyers....any ponzai scheme falls apart and eventually crash. So drug buyers aren't using it much either. Remember when it came out and said it couldn't be tracked, stolen or hacked...oh well.

  • And people have caught on. Compares to a company stock, there is no intrinsic value. No cash flow. No factories/fixed assets. No customers to drive value. Only speculation based price rises that depend on the best buyer paying more. With a stock, there is something tangible to justify the value. With Bitcoin there is only the next buyer.

  • Bitcoin has been an involuntary part of my life as I've seen it constantly peddled as the "cure" to so called "economic conspiracies". I hope they all have fun staying poor as they like to point out. Also I want to rip up all those stupid Pokemon cards that are part of the whole scalping culture that was built on Bitcoin.
  • it's got great fundamentals :D
  • 1. read an opinion piece ... probably at NYT... said the prediction markets are sucking the juice out of the crypto markets. The argument made sense to me. He said the prediction markets appeal to the same demographic. You buy cryptos as a bet they will increase in the future, but in the case of crypto, you may wait ... a long long time, until never. So you HODL. Instead of waiting til never, why not put your real dollars on a bet that might pay off in days, weeks? ie. no need to HODL. Get your dopamine hit
  • The demand of BTC purchase dropped because one man has been advocating for crypto.
  • Whatever.
    "I had a guaranteed military sale with ED-209. Renovation programme. Spare parts for 25 years. Who cares if it worked or not?
    The Old Man thought it was pretty important... Dick." --From Robocop, the real one.

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