Bitcoin hovers – Bitcoin capped a bruising week at about $62,500, down 50% from its October 2025 all-time high of $126k and hovering just above $60k. Investors point to forced selling, shifting attention toward AI stocks and memory chips, delays to the Clarity Act, and a growi
A fresh kind of quiet pressure hung over bitcoin this week: not a crash with drama. but a grind that kept pulling it back toward the same uneasy line. By the time the market closed out the week. bitcoin was last seen trading at $62. 500—roughly half of its all-time high of $126k. reached in October 2025.
The distance from that peak matters because the next milestone is psychological rather than technical. Bitcoin is teetering just above $60k, a number traders watch as if it’s a door that could swing either way. The last time bitcoin traded below $60k was on September 18, 2024.
This decline didn’t happen in isolation inside crypto. Zcash tumbled after an AI-assisted security review exposed a long-standing vulnerability that could have allowed the creation of counterfeit ZEC, underlining how quickly confidence can drain when weaknesses are surfaced.
In bitcoin’s case. the bruising has been tied to a mix of market mechanics and where investors have been looking instead of bitcoin. Charles-Henry Monchau. chief investment officer at Syz Group. said bitcoin’s latest weekly decline was driven by a combination of Strategy’s forced selling and a crowding-out effect from hot money chasing other assets. He described speculators as going all-in on AI stocks and memory chips. especially in Korea. and said the market also anticipates that upcoming “monster IPOs” will divert some retail money into new stocks.
Another pressure point is political, not price. Monchau pointed to the crypto market structure bill known as the Clarity Act, saying it is drifting further out of reach as legislative priorities shift and lawmakers remain divided on key provisions of the bill.
The tension gets sharper when bitcoin is measured against what people have been betting on—especially the idea that it should benefit when geopolitical uncertainty rises. Uncertainty around the Iran war has kept bitcoin under pressure, even as the stock market has risen to new records. That divergence is forcing investors to test two narratives at once.
Rajiv Sawhney. head of international portfolio management at Wave Digital Assets. said the math of the recent correlation has changed dramatically: a 30-day Pearson correlation between bitcoin and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 reached a near-perfect positive correlation about a month ago. but it has collapsed over the last several weeks. While global equities—particularly tech stocks—have pushed to new all-time highs. bitcoin has failed to track the same upward trend.
Still, not everyone is reading the week as a warning that bitcoin’s best days are over. Others are treating the current drop as an entry point.
Speaking on Friday’s Squawk Box Europe. Strive Chief Executive Matt Cole said bitcoin’s fundamentals have “never been better.” He argued this moment mirrors past cycles. pointing out that bitcoin has been at its 200-week moving average for the fifth time. He said the previous four times were “the perfect time to buy the dip. ” and added that he expects this time to “age in the same manner.”.
Bitcoin $60k $62 500 all-time high $126k Clarity Act Strategy forced selling Zcash counterfeit ZEC vulnerability Iran war uncertainty Nasdaq correlation 200-week moving average AI stocks memory chips Korea monster IPOs