It’s another bad day for Bitcoin. Over the past 24 hours, the digital token has declined nearly 4.5%, putting it just above $63,000 and within range of its 52-week low.
But this time, Bitcoin’s fall seems to have nothing to do with the token itself—or the broader cryptocurrency market. Rather, its steep drop seems to be driven by three unrelated factors, to varying degrees.
Here’s what you need to know:
Bitcoin approaches 2026 and 12-month lows
Since Bitcoin hit an all-time high of just over $126,000 per coin in October, the digital token poster child has had a dramatic fall from grace.
The coin’s momentum, which seemed unstoppable last fall, has sharply reversed course. At its current price of around $63,192, it is now down 50% from its all-time high.
And this isn’t even the worst drop that Bitcoin has suffered recently. Earlier this month, Bitcoin fell to $62,353 before rebounding.
Now, Bitcoin is again within touching distance of this February’s low.
To be fair to Bitcoin, it isn’t the only major cryptocurrency seeing steep declines over the past 24 hours. Here’s how Bitcoin compares to other major coins as of the time of this writing:
- Bitcoin: down 4.5%
- Ethereum: down 4.7%
- BNB: down 3.2%
- XRP: down 4.5%
Crypto de-risking may be a driving factor
Why are all these tokens down so much over the past 24 hours?
Interestingly, the fall seems to have little to do with the cryptocurrencies themselves. Instead, today’s crypto decline seems to be spurred by de-risking activity.
“De-risking” is when investors take their money out of high-risk, volatile assets, by selling those assets and investing the proceeds of those sales into other assets that are considered lower risk, and thus less volatile.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are high-risk, volatile assets because their prices can swing widely over a short period of time (hello, today’s drops and Bitcoin’s 50% fall over the last six months).
Besides cryptocurrencies, other high-risk, volatile assets can include various types of stocks—like those in the tech sector.
In contrast, safe-haven, low-volatility assets include things like gold and government bonds.
High-risk, volatile assets can see their prices swing wildly in response to external factors unrelated to the assets themselves.
These swings occur because external factors can introduce significant uncertainty into markets. Uncertainty can lead to losses, so investors try to mitigate future losses by selling high-risk assets to lock in any gains or prevent further declines from affecting their portfolio.
And over the past 24 hours, there has been a hat trick of external uncertainties that is likely leading some crypto investors to derisk.
Trump’s new tariffs, Iran, and AI are weighing on investors’ minds
Over the past 24 hours, three events have occurred that risk injecting significant uncertainty into the economy, and they are likely weighing heavily on the minds of crypto investors.
Most significantly of the three is that Trump’s new tariffs are now in effect.
Last week, the president suffered a dramatic loss when the Supreme Court struck down his signature tariff policy, and thus, the majority of his Liberation Day tariffs could no longer be collected.
In response, Trump vowed to use other methods to impose tariffs on countries around the world. Those tariffs, of up to 15%, are now in effect.
However, in many cases, the new tariffs’ timeframe may be limited to just 150 days without additional approval from Congress, which the legislative body may or may not give.
All this is causing great uncertainty for businesses and governments, and ultimately risks impacting the economy and markets—again.
Also, in the past 24 hours, America is closer than ever to invading Iran. Trump administration officials are due to meet Iranian counterparts in Geneva on Thursday, and if those talks fail, many fear that the president will make good on his threat to attack the country.
Many experts say a war with Iran could be a prolonged one, and prolonged wars have habits of negatively impacting the global economy.
Finally, yesterday, an announcement from Anthropic spooked investors in legacy SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies.
As reported by CNBC, Anthropic announced that its Claude AI could now modernize legacy COBOL systems. COBOL is a computer programming language that has been around since the 1950s and is still the backbone of most corporate systems.
After Anthoripic’s announcement, shares in IBM sank, as IBM generates significant revenue from maintaining these legacy COBOL systems.
Now Anthoripic says its Claude tools can quickly “Identify [COBOL] risks that would take human analysts months to surface.” As a result, IBM shares dropped 13%.
But Anthropic’s news also spooked investors with significant holdings in legacy software companies. Tech stocks can already be volatile, and more proof that AI could have a significant impact on legacy tech companies sent shivers down investors’ spines.
Given the triple uncertainties of tariffs, Iran, and AI, it’s no wonder why investors seem to be de-risking from volatile assets like Bitcoin in an attempt to protect their gains or prevent further portfolio losses.