Last week was rough for crypto. Like genuinely rough.
Bitcoin hit $59,100 on Friday — lowest point since October 2024. Worst weekly performance since 2022, which if you remember was not a fun time to be holding crypto. The word “crypto winter” gets thrown around a lot but 2022 was the real thing and people still have trauma from it.
So yeah. $59,100 stung.
Monday came and things looked a bit better. Bitcoin bounced, climbed as high as $64,200 at one point, and was sitting around $63,000 as the day went on. Ether joined in too, up more than 3% to around $1,680.
But nobody’s really celebrating. The bounce is nice. The situation underneath is still messy.
What Actually Caused the Drop
Few things piled up at once and none of them individually was catastrophic but together they did real damage.
The jobs report Friday was the main trigger across all markets — stocks, gold, crypto all sold off hard. 172,000 jobs added when 80,000 was expected meant rate cut hopes basically evaporated overnight. When people get scared about higher rates they tend to dump their riskiest stuff first. Crypto is usually first in line for that.
Then ETF outflows added pressure. Then Middle East tensions — same Iran-Israel escalation hitting everything.
But the one that really rattled the crypto crowd specifically was Michael Saylor.
The Saylor Thing Freaked People Out More Than It Probably Should Have
Here’s the context. Strategy — the company Saylor runs — has become basically synonymous with buying Bitcoin. The whole pitch is that they accumulate BTC and never stop. Saylor has been one of the most vocal and consistent buyers in the market for years. A lot of people trade partly on the assumption that Strategy is always there as a buyer.
So when news came out that Strategy sold 32 BTC last week, the market reacted like someone had pulled a fire alarm.
32 BTC is not a big number. In the grand scheme of what Strategy holds it’s nothing. But the symbolic damage was significant. If Saylor — the guy who built his entire identity around never selling — is selling even a little bit, what does that mean?
Strategy shares dropped around 7% on Friday. Coinbase fell roughly 7%. Circle, the stablecoin company, shed more than 11%. The fear spread fast.
Then over the weekend Saylor dropped hints that more purchases could be coming. That helped calm things down and is probably part of why Monday saw a bounce. One man’s tweet genuinely moves this market and that’s just the reality of where crypto is right now.
$60,000 Is the Number Everyone Is Staring At
In technical analysis there’s this concept of support levels — price points where buyers have historically shown up and stopped a selloff. $60,000 has become that level for Bitcoin right now.
It’s a round number which matters psychologically. It’s also where buyers stepped in Friday and prevented a full collapse. Hold above it and the story stays “we had a rough week but recovered.” Break through it convincingly and sellers start getting more aggressive, stops get triggered, and the next leg down becomes a real conversation.
Monday’s bounce was encouraging from that perspective. Got back up near $64,000 before pulling back a bit when Israel’s strikes on Iran hit the news wires. Even on a day with active geopolitical risk Bitcoin stayed above $60,000. That’s not nothing.
But context matters. Bitcoin peaked above $126,000 back in October. Even at $63,000 it’s down about half from that high. So while $60,000 feels like a floor worth defending, zooming out the chart doesn’t look like a recovery story yet. It looks like a coin still finding where it belongs after a big run and a bigger fall.
What Actually Needs to Happen for Bitcoin to Stabilize
Rates. That’s basically it.
The whole macro pressure on crypto right now comes from the same place as the pressure on gold and tech stocks — the idea that the Fed might hike rates again instead of cutting them. Higher rates shrink appetite for risky assets and crypto is about as risky as assets get.
Wednesday’s CPI print is going to matter a lot. Soft inflation number takes some heat off the rate hike narrative and probably gives crypto a bit more room to breathe. Hot inflation number and the fear gets louder.
The SpaceX IPO is also happening Friday and that’s going to suck a lot of attention and money toward it. Whether that takes buyers away from crypto or whether a successful massive IPO lifts overall risk appetite — hard to say. Could go either way.
For now Bitcoin is above $60,000 and that’s what the bulls needed to see coming out of last week. Whether it stays there through a week with inflation data, geopolitical noise, and the biggest IPO in Wall Street history — that’s the actual question.