Bitcoin’s overnight selloff deepened as legacy financial markets opened, pulling BTC below $77,000 and extending a week of failed recoveries. The largest cryptocurrency had started the prior business week with volatility near $80,400, then bounced by $2,000 and revisited $82,000 on Tuesday. That strength did not hold. By Wednesday, BTC was back under $79,000, and Thursday’s rebound after the CLARITY Act passed the US Senate Banking Committee became another fakeout. For traders, the market’s repeated rejection of $82,000 exposed fragile conviction, with support levels breaking faster than dip buyers could rebuild confidence across a nervous market still searching for a durable floor.
Bitcoin Weakness Spreads Across Major Altcoins
Bitcoin’s latest leg lower followed a difficult weekend. BTC fell below $80,000 on Saturday, dropped to $78,000 on Sunday and spent roughly 24 hours trying to defend that area. The level finally gave way Monday morning after Trump’s latest threats against Iran, pushing the asset to $76,500 for the first time in about three weeks. Its market capitalization slipped to $1.540 trillion, while dominance over altcoins remained above 58%. Bitcoin kept its relative market leadership, but that dominance offered little comfort when absolute prices continued weakening into the new trading week as well.
Altcoins largely followed Bitcoin lower, and several major names showed sharper stress. Ethereum moved close to losing $2,100 after another 3% daily decline, while BNB fell 2% to $640. XRP dropped below $1.40 after a similar pullback, Dogecoin lost more than 5%, and Bitcoin Cash suffered one of the heaviest large-cap declines, falling more than 11% to around $365. The selloff became broad rather than isolated, signaling that traders were reducing exposure across major crypto segments instead of rotating confidently into alternative winners, even as liquidity stayed focused on downside protection.
Still, the market was not uniformly red. HYPE pushed past $45, and ZEC held near $530, standing out as rare exceptions during the broader altcoin slide. Pi Network moved the other way, sinking below $0.15 and extending local lows. Total crypto market capitalization lost another $50 billion, falling to $2.630 trillion. That leaves a perplexing setup: select tokens can still attract bids during market stress, but the broader tape remains defensive as Bitcoin’s break below $77,000 resets risk appetite and forces traders to watch whether $76,500 becomes support or simply the next checkpoint lower.
