Bitcoin falls below $60,000 for first time since 2024 Trump win

Bitcoin slipped under the $60,000 mark for the first time since October 2024, turning from a market favorite after Donald Trump’s re‑election into a victim of a fast‑shifting speculative environment.

The leading cryptocurrency dropped as much as 6 % to $59,770 during New York trading on Friday. Since peaking above $126,000 last October, Bitcoin has shed more than half of its value and now trades below the level seen when the crypto‑friendly Trump returned to the White House.

The latest decline was driven by investors pulling funds from Bitcoin‑linked exchange‑traded funds, rising geopolitical tensions, and mounting doubts about the staying power of one of the market’s key demand drivers.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc., which helped ignite the previous bull run with sizable Bitcoin acquisitions, has become a focal point of worry over the digital‑asset treasury model after it disclosed an uncommon token sale this week.

The wider backdrop is also turning less hospitable for the sector. For much of the past decade, cryptocurrencies enjoyed a privileged spot in the risk‑taking economy.

Today, capital that once flowed almost automatically into crypto is being spread across a broader range of speculative assets, while artificial intelligence has emerged as the newest technological commodity drawing attention.

“For the longest time, crypto was the hot investment that Silicon Valley and institutions obsessed over — and AI pushed it aside,” said Michael Antonelli, market strategist at Baird, in a phone interview. “It’s as simple as that: AI displaced it as the hot investment trend.”

AI stocks have become the market’s leading growth trade, lessening Bitcoin’s appeal. Meanwhile, retail traders are channeling money into short‑dated options and prediction markets, and even within the digital‑asset universe, stablecoins and perpetual futures are attracting interest that in earlier cycles would likely have gone to Bitcoin.

Smaller cryptocurrencies also fell alongside Bitcoin on Friday. Ether dropped as much as 12.8 % to its lowest level since April 2025, while XRP, Solana and Dogecoin each slipped more than 5 %.

The Trump effect

The downturn is occurring at a moment that should have been a triumph for the crypto industry.

The Trump administration has helped crypto achieve many of the victories the sector pursued for nearly a decade: a supportive president, friendlier regulators, institutional acceptance, and a legislative framework that increasingly treats digital assets as a permanent fixture of the financial system.

Yet instead of sparking a new wave of demand, those milestones have aligned with one of Bitcoin’s deepest pullbacks in years.

Bitcoin’s all‑time high arrived just before the crypto market entered a prolonged selloff, fueled by billions of dollars in liquidated bets that left the market fragile. The Iran conflict worsened risk‑appetite for speculative assets, leaving Bitcoin out in the cold while stocks rallied on AI advances.

Meanwhile, renewed inflation worries have favored gold over Bitcoin, eroding its reputation as an inflation hedge. The promise of institutional adoption has given way to questions about whether the largest buyers can keep expanding their positions at the pace investors once anticipated.

“If gold is competing with the U.S. dollar, then Bitcoin is effectively competing with global liquidity,” said Dean Chen, analyst at crypto exchange Bitunix. “When markets start believing that higher interest rates will persist longer and that the cost of capital will stay elevated, investors naturally cut allocations to non‑yielding assets.”

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Published on June 6, 2026