Every crypto cycle eventually reaches a point where the market stops pretending it’s calm. Monday’s sudden selloff became exactly that kind of moment – sharp, unsettling and revealing. At YourNewsClub, we see it not as a routine correction but as a shift into a phase where fear dictates liquidity more than charts or narratives. It’s the stage where technical pressure, macro risk and regulatory uncertainty stop acting separately and begin amplifying each other.
Bitcoin slid more than 6% in early Asian trading, briefly dipping below $86,000. Ether dropped over 7%, Solana nearly 8%. Some of the losses were later recovered, but the details matter less than the underlying structure: since mid-November, Bitcoin has fallen more than 16% after reaching an all-time high near $126,000. Even last week’s push above $90,000 lacked conviction. The market is still digesting the roughly $19 billion in liquidated leveraged positions from October – a shock that continues to suppress appetite for aggressive buying.
In this environment, the $80,000 level becomes more than technical support; it becomes a psychological test of whether long-term buyers remain engaged or if short-term defensive flows are taking control.
Macro conditions made the drop worse. Rising yields on Japanese government bonds and the strongest signal yet from the Bank of Japan about a potential rate hike triggered a broad unwinding of yen carry trades. As YourNewsClub analyst Owen Radner, who examines digital-era infrastructure as a new geography of capital transmission, explains, when Japan alters the cost of money, long-established financial pathways contract – and crypto tends to sit at the edge where risk is offloaded first.
This shift coincided with weakness in Asian equities, softer S&P 500 futures and a stronger yen. Suddenly, crypto wasn’t operating on its own rhythm; it was being priced alongside the rest of the global risk complex. When liquidity tightens, digital assets lose cushion faster than traditional markets.
Regulation added another layer of pressure. S&P downgraded the stability assessment of USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin, pointing to risks should Bitcoin’s value drop sharply. Meanwhile, China’s central bank issued a renewed warning about virtual currencies and urged authorities to intensify enforcement against illegal activity. For a market built on trust in a few key liquidity hubs, these signals hit at the foundation.
Additional uncertainty came from Strategy Inc. CEO Phong Le, who acknowledged that the company could theoretically sell part of its enormous Bitcoin reserve if mNAV turned negative. He emphasized it as a last-resort scenario, but the message was enough: even large institutional holders are not completely insulated from financial pressures. As YourNewsClub analyst Alex Reinhardt, who studies the intersection of financial systems and digital settlement protocols, notes, statements like this don’t move markets by volume – they move markets by changing expectations.
All of this happened just days before crucial U.S. economic data and updated expectations for Federal Reserve policy through 2026. Political pressure added another twist: President Donald Trump publicly signaled he expects the next Fed chair to pursue rate cuts, a message that unsettles markets more than it stabilizes them.
At Your News Club we interpret the current phase not as collapse but as a transition into a more fragile market regime. In this regime, every rally invites doubt and every dip accelerates. Traders need strict risk management rather than instinct; long-term investors fare best with steady accumulation rather than attempts to call a bottom; and infrastructure players should stress-test their exposure to single stablecoins, single exchanges and single jurisdictions.
Crypto remains inside a long-term bullish structure, but this stage of the cycle is defined not by visions of the future of money but by the present cost of capital, the speed of regulatory signaling and the emotional brittleness of speculative flows. Until these forces stabilize, no short-term bounce will reliably mark a reversal – the market is still searching for its equilibrium point.