Bitcoin retreats below $100,000, causing $850 million in crypto liquidations over past day

Bitcoin saw a notable pullback and retreated to trading below the $100,000 mark. The foremost cryptocurrency is trading at $99,100, with a 5.7% decline over the past day, according to the Block's price page.

Similarly, the price of Ether dipped below $3,100 and is currently trading at $3,065 — an 8.2% drawdown on the day. The native crypto of Solana (SOL) dropped 10% to around $230.

According to Coinglass data, the market drop resulted in crypto traders liquidating over $850 million worth of crypto on exchanges over the last 24 hours, primarily affecting long positions.

This crypto selloff coincided with a notable drop in premarket trading for Nvidia shares, which was 7% lower. The company, the third most valuable chipmaker globally, has a market valuation of $3.1 trillion.

This drop comes after DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, introduced an AI model—DeepSeek R1—that reportedly rivals the performance of leading Western AI models like those from OpenAI and Meta but at a fraction of the cost and computational resources. The news about DeepSeek has contributed to a broader tech stock sell-off.

Within the crypto space, the AI agents category was among the hardest hit by the latest market slide, declining 20% in market capitalization over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Among AI agent coins, Fartcoin led the losses with a 23% drop, followed by a steep 21% fall in Virtuals Protocol. Other key AI agent tokens, such as ai16z, AIXBT, and AI Rig, also saw substantial pullbacks.

The memecoin sector wasn’t spared either, witnessing an 11% fall overall. Over the past 24 hours, Pepe declined 16%, SPX6900 dropped 16%, and Dogecoin pulled back 11%. Trump's family members, Trump and MELANIA, experienced declines as well. TRUMP peaked at over $70 per token on Jan. 19 and has since dropped nearly 170% to trade at $25.5 — with a 17% drop since yesterday. Its fully diluted valuation stands at $25.5 billion.

Since early December, Bitcoin has been trading sideways, around $100,000 and has consolidated around this mark, although there have been notable fluctuations. Up to U.S. President Trump’s inauguration, Bitcoin reached a new all-time high, surpassing $109,000. This was primarily driven by market optimism about Trump’s pro-crypto policies. The price has since cooled off and returned to around $100,000.

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, contributed to the discourse with a post on the X platform, suggesting a bearish outlook for Bitcoin in the short term. Hayes predicted that Bitcoin’s price could drop between $70,000 and $75,000 due to the impact of what he claims is a “mini financial crisis.”

However, Hayes also projected a dramatic rebound for Bitcoin, expecting it to reach as high as $250,000 this year, driven by a potential resumption of monetary easing policies.

Amid these market dynamics, the new Trump administration has been proactive, introducing a crypto working group to propose new regulations and explore a digital assets stockpile.