By Frances Yue
Bitcoin is now trading more than 20% below its record high reached on Oct. 6, 2025.
Bitcoin is on track to end Friday in the bear-market territory for the first time since April 23. The crypto’s weakness, coupled with a selloff in tech stocks this week, has sparked concerns about whether investor sentiment that’s been driving this year’s rally in risk assets may be starting to turn sour.
The largest cryptocurrency (BTCUSD) traded at around $101,000 Friday afternoon, over 20% below its record high of $126,272.76 reached on Oct.6, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
A bear market is typically defined as an asset or index declining by at least 20% from its prior peak, based on closing levels. Dow Jones Market Data suggests bitcoin will officially enter a bear market Friday at the stock market’s 4 p.m. Eastern closing time. Of note, bitcoin trades 24 hours, seven days a week, and there is no actual close.
The weakness in bitcoin had some corners of Wall Street nervous. “I don’t want to give the impression that we are in panic mode here by any stretch of the imagination, but what we are seeing is some of the very durable buy-the-dip areas of the market are acting differently today than we’ve seen in other parts of the year on a relative basis, and that is notable,” Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, said in a Friday phone interview.
“Up until the last couple of weeks, any reasonable degree of pullback in bitcoin or this group [of popular tech stocks like Meta Platforms Inc. (META) and Nvidia Corp. (NVDA)] would have been aggressively bought, and we’re not seeing that now,” Hackett noted.
Hackett said he remains bullish on stocks – citing friendly seasonality factors, strong earnings and another potential interest-rate cut from the Federal Reserve in December as possible tailwinds into year-end. But he is closely watching whether investor sentiment has shifted. For now, “it’s too early to say that there’s been a paradigm shift in how investors are acting,” he added.
Hackett isn’t the only one staying alert. As MarketWatch’s Jamie Chisholm reported, a group of strategists at Citi said that bitcoin’s more than 20% drop into bear-market territory may signal liquidity issues, especially as tech stocks fall.
U.S. stocks were heading for sharp weekly declines on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA down 1.8% for the week so far, at last check. The S&P 500 SPX was off about 2.7% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP was pulling back 4.4%, putting both on pace for their biggest weekly declines since President Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs were announced in April.
-Frances Yue
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11-07-25 1324ET
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