Bitcoin's price plunged nearly 14% over the past week, settling near $65,200 on Saturday morning after hitting a low of $65,000. This drop marked the weakest level since mid-August, as weekend selling extended a broader market downturn fueled by a stronger dollar and expectations of a December Federal Reserve rate hike. Just a week ago, on November 7, bitcoin was trading at around $75,750.
The decline accelerated after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's resignation on Thursday, which triggered a sell-off in AI stocks and potentially dragged bitcoin below $72,000. The cryptocurrency dipped to $71,000 by Thursday evening, then crashed to $67,555 around midnight Eastern on Friday before briefly recovering to $69,800. A brief rally above $70,000 after the producer-price report faded, and bitcoin spent Friday afternoon below $70,000, near $68,900. Selling resumed Friday evening, pushing the price into the mid-$66,000s.
Economic factors also weighed on bitcoin. The Producer Price Index rose 0.3% in October, below expectations, but the 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 5.17% on Friday, its highest in four weeks. The U.S. dollar index held at a 19-month high, its strongest level since April 2025. Boston Fed President Susan Collins and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly both signaled potential rate hikes, which raise the cost of holding non-yielding assets like bitcoin. Traders fully priced a quarter-point hike at the Fed’s December 8-9 meeting.
Demand from spot bitcoin ETFs has not offset the sell-off. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) saw $2 billion in outflows over nine straight days through Wednesday. Meanwhile, bitcoin’s mining difficulty dropped 9.13% at 12:02 a.m. ET Saturday, falling from about 148.36 trillion to 134.82 trillion, the largest cut since June. The next tests for bitcoin’s price will come with Nvidia’s earnings report on Tuesday and further market reactions to economic data.