Bitcoin Breaks Below $60,000 for First Time Since October 2024

CNBC reported Friday that bitcoin’s bitcoin price drop accelerated sharply this week, with the asset briefly touching $59,764 — a level last seen in October 2024. By afternoon, it was changing hands near $60,450, down roughly 5% on the day and on course for a 17% weekly decline.

A Week of Compounding Pressure

The sell-off began after Michael Saylor‘s firm Strategy offloaded a portion of its bitcoin holdings. The move dented market confidence and triggered several hundred million dollars in cascading liquidations. Related equities felt the pain too. Coinbase, Circle, and Strategy each shed roughly 8% on the day, with Strategy down approximately 25% for the week.

Friday’s damage deepened after a stronger-than-expected May jobs report pushed Treasury yields higher. Rising yields typically weigh on risk assets, and bitcoin proved no exception.

ETF Flows and the Narrative Problem

Bitcoin’s dominant investment narratives are also under strain, CNBC noted. The asset had long been positioned either as digital gold benefiting from geopolitical stress or as a high-beta technology proxy. Neither story is holding up. Equity markets have climbed to fresh records while bitcoin has lost more than half its value from the all-time high of roughly $126,000 reached in October 2025.

Rajiv Sawhney, head of international portfolio management at Wave Digital Assets, told CNBC that a near-perfect correlation between bitcoin and major equity indexes observed a month ago has since collapsed. Tech stocks continued pushing higher while bitcoin diverged sharply lower.

On the ETF front, Thursday brought a small reprieve. Spot bitcoin funds logged a combined net inflow of $3 million, ending a 13-day outflow streak — the longest since the products launched. Total net assets across bitcoin ETFs have fallen to roughly $80.4 billion, down from $107.8 billion in mid-May.

Background: From Record Highs to a Half-Year Slide

Bitcoin peaked at around $126,000 last October, fueled by post-election optimism, institutional accumulation, and ETF demand. The subsequent retreat has been grinding and multi-layered. Legislative hopes tied to the so-called Clarity Act — a proposed crypto market-structure framework — have dimmed as congressional attention shifts elsewhere. Meanwhile, prolonged uncertainty around the Iran conflict has kept a ceiling on speculative appetite.

Also Read: What the May Jobs Report Means for Fed Rate Cuts

Some Buyers See Opportunity

Not everyone is bearish. Matt Cole, chief executive of Strive, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe that bitcoin’s fundamentals remain strong and that the asset is currently sitting at its 200-week moving average. Cole argued that each prior touch of that level proved a durable entry point for long-term buyers.

Charles-Henry Monchau, chief investment officer at Syz Group, offered a more cautious read. He told CNBC that speculative capital is rotating toward AI stocks and memory chips, and that a wave of large upcoming IPOs may pull additional retail money away from crypto.

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