Crypto market value slides under $2.40T, breaking its 200-day average

Crypto's total market value has slipped below $2.40T, its weakest level since mid-August, and has now broken under its 200-day moving average. That line gave the market no meaningful support, leaving the door open to a faster sell-off. The decline has been grinding for roughly five weeks and has held a surprisingly steady pace. Not one of the most liquid coins is up over the past 24 hours, with losses ranging from 0.2% on Internet Computer and 0.3% on Tron to 8% on Aave and 9.1% on NEAR.

Bitcoin broke below $72K at 13:50 GMT, right as US trading opened. NVIDIA shares lost more than 10% in 24 hours, though the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 were both rising, so blaming the chipmaker only goes so far. Bulls spent four days trying to defend the 200-day line and failed, with each intraday selling wave starting from a lower level. Sellers appear to have hit a cluster of stop-loss orders, and the next significant support sits at $63–66K.

Ethereum fell under $2,000, erasing almost all of its August rally gains — a rally tied to a softening tone on monetary policy. The reversal comes as odds of a 50 basis point Fed hike in December have emerged. The nearest support is $1,850, with a stronger level around $1,550, near the lows of both this year and last.

Liquidity is thinning across the board. CryptoQuant reports that Tether's USDT market cap has shrunk by $6.6 billion over the past 60 days — more than double the drop recorded after the FTX collapse in 2022. Digital asset treasury firms, the public companies holding crypto on their balance sheets, have started selling Bitcoin from reserves, with their ratio of purchases to sales falling below 90%. Capriole Investments points out that has happened only three times before, and each one proved a good moment to buy.

Ethereum's staking exit queue has fallen by more than 85% since October, according to Validator Queue, while growth in new staking demand has slowed and loans secured against ETH are climbing, raising liquidation risk. Bitmine reported a paper loss of $6.3 billion for the financial year ending 31 August, mainly on Ethereum's price decline — unrealised losses 51 times larger than its staking income from reserve revaluation.

On the other side of the ledger, a consortium of 21 major banks including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America has committed $270 million to fund a future joint stablecoin issuer. The first product will be a dollar-pegged stablecoin, scheduled for the first half of 2027.