By James Rubin
3 min read
Bitcoin miners and other crypto-focused stocks plummeted on Thursday amid a wider downturn in crypto markets and other risk-on assets, fueled by the same macroeconomic uncertainties that have bedeviled markets for weeks.
Miners Bitdeer Technologies Group and Bitfarms were down more than 20% and 17%, respectively, while Cipher Mining fell 13%. Share prices of other leaders in the sector, which has faced headwinds in recent weeks, were well into negative territory, including MARA Holdings, which holds the most Bitcoin among miners and was down over 10%.
Those declines came as Bitcoin's price dropped below $99,000 for the first time since early May. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently down 3% over the past 24 hours to $99,371, off almost 22% from its record high set little more than a month ago.
Galaxy Digital was recently down more than 12%, while Robinhood Markets and crypto exchange giant Coinbase were down about 9% and 7%, respectively. Treasuries were also hard-hit, with BitMine Immersion, the largest Ethereum treasury, falling nearly 10% and Bitcoin-focused Strategy off over 6%.
Major indexes were all solidly red as investors veered away from tech stocks with the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, which has a hefty technology component, off 2.5% and 1.75%, respectively.
Those measures have held up better than digital assets and companies focused on them over the past month, despite the longest government shutdown in U.S. history—which ended late Wednesday—and dueling concerns about inflation and the economy.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics failed to deliver its monthly Consumer Price Index for October, with the White House saying the Bureau of Labor Statistics could not finish data collection because of the shutdown.
A Wall Street Journal consensus forecast the CPI rising 3% for the month on an annual basis, still well above the U.S. central bank's 2% goal. The Federal Reserve has remained cautious about cutting interest rates because inflation has remained sticky, but it has also had to balance jobs and productivity data that would favor economic stimulus and buoy markets that thrive on liquidity.
On Tuesday, ADP's latest real-time estimate of job market trends found that U.S. employers shed more than 11,000 jobs per week through late October. A separate report by Goldman Sachs showed U.S. non farm payrolls declining by 50,000 jobs during October.
In a Myriad prediction market, 55% of respondents expect Bitcoin to reach $115,000 and not drop to $85,000—a downward shift of about 6% over the last 24 hours. (Disclaimer: Myriad is a unit of Dastan, the parent company of an editorially independent Decrypt.)
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