Bitcoin falls below $90,000 as Bybit hack adds to global jitters

London — Bitcoin dropped below $90,000 to its lowest since November 18 on Tuesday as jitters over US tariffs reinforced the blow to crypto investor confidence from last week’s $1.5bn hack of Ether from the Bybit exchange.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, was last down 7.25% at $87,169.76. Global investors have been nervous on signs that the so-called exceptionalism of the US economy might be fading, while President Donald Trump prepares to impose tariffs.

Trump indicated on Monday he still plans to impose a 25% levy on imports from Canada and Mexico from early March and, in a sign of unease, safe-haven US treasury prices have rallied sharply, sending yields to two-month lows.

“The macroeconomic situation has been the main reason for the price decline in the last few hours,” said Marcel Heinrichsmeier, an analyst at DZ Bank. “The Bybit hack and the meme coin turmoil of the past few weeks have contributed to a generally worse mood in the crypto market than at the beginning of the year.”

While bitcoin has lost almost 8% in the past week, smaller alt-coins have been hit even harder. Dogecoin, a meme coin, and the tokens for the solana and cardano networks have all dropped about 20%, according to CoinGecko.

“The brutal sell-off happening in crypto is not unexpected considering we’ve just seen the biggest hack in our history,” said Charles Wayn, co-founder of Galxe, a decentralised blockchain-based platform. “This has been compounded by further fears over global tariffs.”

Delayed reaction

Dubai-headquartered Bybit, the largest exchange after Binance, said last week hackers had stolen digital tokens worth about $1.5bn. Blockchain research firm Elliptic said the hack was “almost certainly the single largest known theft of any kind in all time.” Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, was down 8.46% at $2,414.29, around its lowest since October.

Joseph Edwards, head of research at Enigma Securities, said Tuesday’s sell-off seemed to be “a bit of a delayed reaction from the Bybit hack.

“Markets held up peculiarly well in response to what was expected to be a significant destabilising event ... but there tends to be a price to be paid further down the line. We’ve seen the classic thing, where a slight contraction in risk has caused a small cascading sell-off within crypto markets specifically.”

Part of the reason for the shift in sentiment is that policy changes in the US have not lived up to expectations. A few months ago, optimism that the Trump administration would champion a strategic bitcoin fund and loosen regulation left investors primed for another jump in the cryptocurrency, which topped $100,000 in December. But beyond a flurry of appointments of crypto-friendly officials when he took office, there has been little concrete news.

In addition, investors have been pulling money out of bitcoin-backed exchange-traded funds. LSEG data shows the biggest ETFs are set for a net monthly outflow of about $644m, the biggest since their launch in January 2024.

Reuters