Bitcoin Gives Up All Post-Election Gains as Sentiment Sours
The price of the cryptocurrency dropped below $67,000 at Thursday's low.
Bitcoin prices continued to slide Thursday, falling below two key levels that underscore how dramatically sentiment has shifted in the past year.
The first was roughly $67,100, the level where bitcoin traded just before the U.S. presidential election in November 2024. Following President Trump’s victory, optimism around a more crypto-friendly administration helped fuel a powerful rally. Bitcoin surged in the months that followed, ultimately peaking near $125,000 in October of last year, almost double its pre-election price.
That rally has now fully unwound. At Thursday’s intraday low of around $66,600, bitcoin had erased all of its post-election gains.
The second level bitcoin fell below is more symbolic but equally striking: $67,700, the high set in November 2021 at the peak of the post-Covid crypto cycle. Falling below that mark means bitcoin is now trading at prices first reached more than four years ago. In other words, despite extreme volatility in between, the asset has been effectively flat over that period.
Of course, this is just a snapshot in time. Prices could look very different three months from now, let alone three years from now. Still, the move highlights how quickly enthusiasm has faded and how disappointing the recent performance has been for investors who bought into bitcoin over the past year or more.
That disappointment is showing up clearly in ETF flows. Since the start of the year, investors have pulled more than $2 billion from U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs, reversing course after massive inflows in prior years. By comparison, roughly $35 billion flowed into spot bitcoin ETFs in each of the past two years.
The pain hasn’t been limited to bitcoin. Other major crypto assets have fared even worse. Ether was trading around $2,400 ahead of the 2024 election and now sits below $2,000. That’s a far cry from its $4,800 high in 2021—a level it briefly approached again in August of last year during a burst of enthusiasm around stablecoins and Ethereum-focused digital asset holding companies.
For now, the broader crypto market is grappling with a sharp reversal in sentiment. Whether this period proves to be a temporary lull or something more lasting remains to be seen.
