Bitcoin falls below $95,000 amid tech sell-off, bounces off lows on Friday

Bitcoin dipped below $95,000 on Friday, pushing the world’s oldest cryptocurrency further into the red and continuing its four-day decline amid a broader artificial intelligence-linked stock pullback.

The digital asset hit $94,491.22 early Friday, marking its lowest level since May 7. Bitcoin is down nearly 9% week to date, despite briefly reclaiming $107,000 at one point on Tuesday and then rolling over.

The token was last trading at $97,163.99, or 1% lower on the day, as it regained some of its morning losses.

The largest crypto by market capitalization attracts many of the same investors that have poured funds into BigTech stocks, linking the two trades. Several of those stocks are falling this week amid a resurfacing of concerns over Silicon Valley giants’ astronomical spending on AI initiatives.

“There’s less money in the system,” Yat Siu, co-founder of crypto investment and blockchain development firm Animoca Brands told CNBC. That leads to investors “selling certain things off in order to basically deal with other shortfalls or concerns that they might have because there’s a retraction broadly.”

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell about 0.6% on Friday, with Meta, Alphabet, Intel, Nvidia and Tesla shedding between roughly 1% and 2%.

Crypto-linked stocks also fell Friday. Software firm and bitcoin treasury Strategy, formerly Microstrategy, dipped 6%. Trading platforms Gemini Space Station and Bullish‘s stocks shed 2%, while Coinbase shares edged down 1%. Digital asset mining firm Bitmine Immersion Technologies was also trading 3% lower.

Siu noted that this crypto market cycle could differ from past ones, particularly due to the relatively recent influx of institutional capital into digital assets. Institutions don’t typically follow major, long-time bitcoin holders’ almost “religious” belief in the token’s four-year price cycle, he said. That could help bitcoin and other digital assets remain somewhat resilient to recent and soon-to-come headwinds.

“People think bitcoin is going to go down to $60,000 because of the four year cycle [and the token’s history of] drops and corrections,” Siu said. “But, I don’t believe that because the institutions are not going to follow that particular cycle. They’ll look at [the market downturn] as more as a buying opportunity.”