Bitcoin tumbles below $98,000 in risk-off move as Nasdaq stocks are crushed

Cryptocurrencies tumbled to begin the final week of January, with the market in a cooling period after running to a new record and pulled lower by the DeepSeek-driven sell-off in tech stocks.

The price of bitcoin fell 5% to $98,432.54, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it fell as low as $97,750.00. The broader market of cryptocurrencies, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, dropped nearly 10%.

Nasdaq futures were down about 4% in early trading.

Shares of Coinbase and MicroStrategy fell 6% and 5%, respectively, in premarket trading. Bitcoin miners that power AI ventures suffered deeper cuts. Core Scientific slid 18.5%, while Terawulf lost 14% and Iren, formerly known as Iris Energy, fell 10%.

Crypto was under pressure from a rout in tech stocks. Chinese startup DeepSeek said it may have created a competitive artificial intelligence model for a fraction of the cost, sparking concerns about U.S. dominance in AI and big tech’s spending on AI models and data centers.

“Today’s 3% decline in Nasdaq futures (on DeepSeek news), so far, has driven Digital Asset liquidation overnight,” Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick said in a note Monday. “This relationship highlights the continued strong (and strengthening) relationship between digital assets and the tech sector. [Bitcoin] remains strongly correlated to Nasdaq, much more so than it does to gold.”

Bitcoin has seen more than $250 million in long liquidations over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, as traders who used leverage to bet the price of bitcoin would continue to rise were forced to sell their assets to cover their losses.

The selling follows a mixed response by the market to President Donald Trump’s widely anticipated executive order on crypto, issued Thursday afternoon, and a lack of news since. Some crypto traders were disappointed the order didn’t fully commit to the establishment of a stockpile, and some didn’t care for the “stockpile” language versus a reserve. (While the latter would involve actively buying bitcoin in regular installments, a stockpile would simply not sell any of the bitcoin currently held by the U.S. government.) Bitcoin hit a new record above $109,000 last week in anticipation of the executive order.

“Ultimately this set up digital assets to be more at risk of a sharp sell-off whether the driver of the sell-off came from digital assets or not (in this case Nasdaq),” Kendrick said of the market’s initial reaction to the order. “Nevertheless, at least the Trump administration news is out there, so the disappointment/confusion and therefore ‘hope phase’ is over.”

Investors may also be derisking ahead of this week’s Federal Reserve meeting, which is scheduled to conclude Wednesday.

“Investors are hoping the Fed will lean more to the accommodative side but are fearful the Fed won’t be as dovish as what the market would like to see,” said Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX. “The most important takeaway right now is to see the forest through the trees. When we look at the bitcoin chart, there is nothing bearish about the price action.”

—CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting.