Bitcoin faced a tough start to the week on Monday, falling below the US$100,000 mark as fears around a US financial crisis and a wider technology sector sell-off hit.
A 3.7% decline for the day sent Bitcoin to US$98,979 and well off a record above US$108,000 seen just a week ago before Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
This coincided with a battering for global technology stocks, to which Bitcoin’s performance has historically been correlated, on news last week of a potentially revolutionary artificial intelligence bot from China’s DeepSeek.
Said to be reliant on far cheaper and less data-hungry chips, the technology has raised questions over existing dominant sector names, such as Nvidia Corp.
Prominent crypto trader and former BitMEX exchange boss Arthur Hayes separately laid out warnings of an impending US financial crisis and resultant Federal Reserve stimulus.
“I am calling for a $70k to $75k correction in [Bitcoin],” he said in an X post, before “a mini financial crisis” and “resumption of money printing”.
Bitcoin could then top US$250,000 “by the end of the year” as a result, Hayes added.
Smaller tokens also took a beating on Monday, with Ether and Ripple down 5.3% and 7.1% respectively as risk-off sentiment sweeped the market.