Bitcoin crashes to $80,760 as BlackRock clients dump holdings and $1.4 trillion wipes from crypto markets

Bitcoin hit another wall Friday morning.

The price of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency plunged as low as $80,760, wiping out Thursday’s short-lived rebound and extending a brutal month-long slide that has erased more than $1.4 trillion from the broader crypto market. Once riding high on late-summer momentum, bitcoin is now trading over 30% below its October peak, with the entire crypto market slipping under the $3 trillion mark.

For traders who bet on a year-end recovery, the mood has shifted fast. The latest drop pushed bitcoin near levels last seen in April, back when President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs rattled global markets and sent risk assets into retreat.

Bitcoin has recovered some ground and is now trading at $82,688.85.

Now, a fresh wave of fear is taking hold. With the Federal Reserve increasingly unlikely to cut interest rates in December, the cushion that many investors expected for speculative assets has disappeared.

On November 21, Sara Devereux, head of Vanguard’s bond business, poured cold water on rate-cut optimism, saying she expects the Fed to move just once or twice more.

“Too many Fed cuts are priced into the market right now. The market is over-relying on that,” Devereux told the Financial Times. “Maybe we have one or two more cuts.”

She went on to suggest that by the middle of next year, borrowing costs could reach what the Fed views as a neutral range, where rates no longer push growth higher or lower.

That reality has rattled traders. Overnight, Bitcoin slid toward $80,000, dragging down the wider crypto market as investors shifted into a full risk-off mindset.

“Bitcoin, which sits at the top end of the risk spectrum, extended a losing streak that’s been in motion since late October. If people have lost confidence in tech stocks, they certainly won’t have the confidence to speculate on cryptocurrency,” Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, told Forbes.

Confusion over the Fed’s next move has only made things worse.

“It also didn’t help that investors are struggling to predict what the Federal Reserve will do next with interest rates. Conflicting messages from central policymakers have left investors scratching their heads over whether rates will be cut next month or not. Markets are now expecting a 67% chance of no change at December’s meeting, whereas a month ago there was a 98% chance of a quarter percentage point cut.”

The uncertainty is tied to delayed labor data from September. The report, pushed back by the government shutdown, showed that U.S. employers added 119,000 jobs that month, well above expectations.

“U.S. job growth blew past expectations in September, painting a rosy pre-shutdown picture and delivering the largest jobs gain in five months,” said Isaac Stell, investment manager at Wealth Club.

That data now stands as the final major snapshot for policymakers ahead of their meeting on December 9.

“Despite the data already being out of date, this will be the only major jobs release prior to the Fed’s end-of-year meeting,” Stell noted.

Internal disagreement at the Fed is making the picture even murkier.

“Given the Fed minutes showed hesitancy within the ranks when it comes to a final interest rate cut in 2025, the strength of this jobs report will likely ensure nothing changes,” Stell said. “So, the sleigh bells will not be ringing this December at the Fed. Instead of a perfectly wrapped rate cut, the U.S. consumer is likely to be met with a lump of coal.”

Warnings of deeper damage are piling up.

Citrini Research told investors that risk-off sentiment will likely continue into mid-December, with fallout from the longest government shutdown in U.S. history adding a fresh layer of instability.

“If BTC is decoupling from its programmed cadence, I think the market could be mispricing both upside potential and downside risk,” said Robert Le, head of research at Kiln.

Liquidations over the past day alone reached roughly $2 billion. At the same time, investors pulled $548 million from bitcoin exchange-traded funds in a single session, pushing November’s total ETF outflows to $3.77 billion, based on DefiLlama data.

BlackRock clients led that slide, removing $355 million from the iShares Bitcoin Trust in what has become the fund’s worst month since February.

The pressure isn’t limited to crypto.

Wall Street also took a hit as volatility returned with force. The Nasdaq closed down 2.1%, the S&P 500 dropped 1.5%, and the Dow shed 380 points. Nvidia, which surged earlier in the day after posting another strong earnings report, finished 3.1% lower as renewed concerns around AI valuations crept in.

Thursday’s 3% intraday swing on the S&P 500 marked its sharpest reversal since April’s tariff-driven sell-off.

All of it adds up to a market caught off balance, facing a shrinking margin for optimism, and staring down a tightening monetary outlook with far fewer safety nets than before.