Bitcoin marks deep plunge as investors lose appetite for crypto

Cryptocurrencies entered another month in the red as Bitcoin fell more than 5% in European trading on Monday morning, dropping below €75,000.

After reaching a record high of about €110,000 in early October, Bitcoin began a steep and prolonged decline as the market saw significant liquidations and sell-offs. In November, Bitcoin lost well over 16% of its value, falling at one point towards €74,000.

Other major cryptocurrencies also lost significant value on Monday, with Ethereum and Solana dropping by over 5%, continuing the downward trend first seen in October.

Bitcoin showed brief signs of stabilising last month although the rebounds proved short-lived and prices have since begun to fall again.

Investors shed risky stocks

In the past several weeks, other stocks have also dropped as investors revert to risk-averse behaviour and inflows into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds continue to be low.

An ETF is a basket of assets such as stocks, bonds, commodities or even Bitcoin wrapped into a single product. Instead of buying each asset individually, you buy one ETF share and that share gives you the exposure to everything the fund holds.

Investors often sell ETF shares when one or more of its underlying assets' prices fall, affecting the price of the total ETF.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency has been dragged lower by a mix of global market uncertainty and fading investor appetite as traders dumped riskier assets following weaker economic signals and evaporating hopes of early rate cuts by central banks such as the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.

Experts have also tied the slump to aggressive trading techniques by professional investors.

While many had hoped Bitcoin would start to perform more like a safe-haven stock akin to digital gold, its unpredictability indicates that it performs more like other tech-adjacent stocks. Nvidia, the company behind the most sought-out GPU chips, also jumped this year and saw similar steep dips recently.