A record hack, a blue wave and a tech stock rout have given Bitcoin investors plenty to worry about. Yet the leading cryptocurrency has fallen only about 1% in the past 24 hours and now trades near $75,000. “It could have gotten hit a lot harder,” said John LaForge, chief alternatives strategist at Ned Davis Research. “The fact that it’s still… holding the 75 to 80 [range], I consider it a mild positive.”
Bitcoin’s latest decline came after weekend revelations about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair—and the company’s subsequent investigation into whether he was targeted by Chinese intelligence. The news followed two other setbacks for the industry: a Democratic takeover of Congress that dealt losses to crypto-backed candidates, and a hack that drained roughly $6.3 billion from Binance, the world’s largest centralized crypto exchange.
Broader macro pressures haven’t helped either. The tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped over 5% last week in response to fears of a broad selloff in AI stocks. Investors now await Tuesday’s inflation report, which economists expect to show a further rise in consumer prices. Traders also anticipate a Federal Reserve rate hike in December—another potential headwind for crypto markets.
The cryptocurrency has suffered much sharper selloffs in the past. In October 2025, President Donald Trump’s threat of steep new tariffs on Chinese imports triggered more than $19 billion in crypto liquidations within a day. In June, Bitcoin fell below $60,000 to its lowest level of 2026, amid persistently high interest rates and heavy outflows from Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
Bitcoin’s resilience may say more about how far it has already fallen than about the latest bad news, according to Ish Asad, crypto research analyst at asset manager Bitwise.
“I think a lot of the bad news was priced in already. It’s not to say that it’s not going to chop sideways for a little bit longer, but I think the bottom is clearly in,” he said, referring to Bitcoin’s June low.
Asad argued that an earlier exodus from crypto into AI investments had left fewer investors ready to sell Bitcoin, which helped cushion its response to the recent turmoil.
That hasn’t been the case for altcoins—the industry term for cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency and the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, has fallen nearly 5% over the past day. XRP, the token associated with Ripple, has posted similar daily losses and is down nearly 12% over the past week. Other major cryptocurrencies have also declined.
LaForge sees the gap as a familiar pattern: “Eventually when prices come down across the board, Bitcoin goes down less, and [altcoins] go down more,” he said.
He expects that divergence to persist in a recovery, with Bitcoin gaining a larger share of the crypto market while many smaller tokens lag.