Bitcoin has endured its worst week since the implosion of the FTX exchange in 2022, with the world’s most heavily traded cryptocurrency rattled by a leading bitcoin treasury company’s decision to trim its holdings.
The digital currency shed almost a fifth of its value over the week to trade below $61,000, its lowest level since September 2024. It was bitcoin’s sharpest weekly decline since November 2022, when the collapse of FTX amid a fraud scandal sent shockwaves through digital asset markets. The slide also leaves bitcoin worth half of the record high of more than $126,000 it reached last October, a peak that arrived after a sustained rally fuelled by Donald Trump’s pro-crypto agenda.
Much of the latest leg down was traced to Monday’s disclosure by Strategy, the world’s largest corporate holder of bitcoin, led by Michael Saylor, that it had offloaded some of its crypto. At roughly $2.5 million, the disposal was a sliver of Strategy’s stockpile of more than $50 billion. Yet it carried outsized symbolic weight: Saylor had repeatedly insisted he would never sell, declaring in 2022, “Never. No. We’re not sellers. We’re only acquiring and holding.”
That apparent reversal unnerved a market already losing momentum. Bitcoin has been grinding lower for months as a string of redemptions from exchange-traded funds drained liquidity and speculative capital rotated towards racier bets.
Market-watchers also pointed to the fanfare surrounding the forthcoming Wall Street listing of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rockets-to-AI conglomerate, as a drain on the bitcoin market. SpaceX is seeking to raise as much as $86 billion through the float, which would value the business at almost $1.8 trillion, with retail investors expected to account for a sizeable chunk of the deal.
Mark Dowding, chief investment officer for fixed income at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, wrote in an online note that “it has been interesting to observe a sharp correction in the price of bitcoin and other digital assets as holders get bored by lacklustre returns in crypto and seek to jump on momentum.” He added: “From this perspective, it is instructive to see how assets can struggle as they move from being the flavour of the month to being suddenly out of fashion.”
The sell-off is a sobering reminder of the asset’s volatility for the millions of Britons now exposed to it. Crypto ownership in the UK has surged in recent years, with an estimated seven million adults holding digital assets at the last count, though the Financial Conduct Authority continues to warn that the sector is largely unregulated and that investors should be prepared to lose all their money. The regulator’s latest cryptoassets consumer research underlines how exposed retail buyers remain to swings of this kind.
For now, the episode has reopened a familiar debate about whether bitcoin is maturing into a credible store of value or remains a speculative instrument at the mercy of sentiment, a question analysts remain sharply divided on.
Amy Ingham
Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.