Bitcoin Drops Below $77,000 as Chip Rout and Midterm Jitters Rattle Markets

Bitcoin slid back under $77,000 on Tuesday morning in Asia, dropping about 2% and erasing the bounce buyers had scratched together a day earlier. The token had briefly touched roughly $77,600 late Sunday before the recovery ran out of gas. Most major digital assets followed it down.

Zcash took the hardest hit, tumbling nearly 10% to about $1,140 — a sharp reversal after it led Monday's gainers. HYPE shed 5% to around $84, SOL lost 3% to about $92, and BNB fell 2% to below $700. Ether and DOGE each slipped about 2%, with ether hanging just above $2,250, while XRP barely budged at $1.25. TRX was the lone standout, climbing about 2% while everything else bled.

The pressure didn't start in crypto. A gauge of U.S. chipmakers stretched its three-day sell-off to 12%, and the Nasdaq 100 is now down 10% from its peak — officially a correction by the measure traders use. The S&P 500 slipped 0.5%. Asia caught the flu: South Korea's tech-heavy Kospi fell more than 3%, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped almost 1%, and Chinese stocks declined even after the central bank said it would nudge financial institutions to lean harder on stock-market support tools. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday.

Currency and commodity markets added their own noise. The yuan snapped a 13-day winning streak — its longest since 1996 — after the People's Bank of China told banks to hold more foreign currency in reserve. Oil plunged on optimism that the war in Iran is closer to wrapping up, though the relief did little to lift the broader mood.

Now the wildcard: Americans are heading to the polls, with the first midterm results due as Asian markets open Wednesday. Investors are waiting rather than buying, and the chip-led sell-off is doing the rest of the work.

In earlier coverage, this outlet noted the Nasdaq 100 was trading under short- and medium-term pressure with downside risk elevated unless key resistance was reclaimed, and flagged the launch of JQQQ, a blockchain-native fund offering digital access to Nasdaq-100 exposure. It also warned that weak chip leadership and crowded positioning could keep sentiment fragile — a call that looks prescient this week.