Crypto Posts Its Worst Week Since 2024 as Bitcoin Slides Toward 61,000 Dollars

Digital assets fell sharply this week, and the decline accelerated on Friday. CoinDesk reported that bitcoin lost close to 15 percent over the week and ether more than 17 percent, the steepest weekly drop for the sector since July 2024. By Friday bitcoin had fallen below 60,000 dollars to roughly 59,800 dollars, its lowest level since October 2024, after starting the week well above 75,000 dollars.

The decline had several causes at once. Traders pointed to persistent inflation, uncertainty over whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates, and renewed strength in the United States dollar, which raises the cost of holding assets that pay no yield. On Friday the Labor Department reported that the economy added 172,000 jobs in May, far above the roughly 80,000 economists had expected, a result that reduced expectations of a near-term rate cut and supported the dollar. United States spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded another day of net withdrawals, extending a run of outflows, and Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, disclosed its first sale of the asset since 2022. A security exploit at the privacy coin zcash added to the unease.

The decline was visible in markets that trade through the weekend. In Israel, where the trading week ends on Friday, Globes noted that bitcoin was completing a sixth straight session of declines even as the Tel Aviv stock index closed slightly higher. Gold, the older hard-money asset, fell below 4,450 dollars an ounce and was set for a weekly loss of more than 2 percent, according to commodity data, so the selling was not confined to speculative tokens.

From a sound-money perspective, the episode tests the idea that bitcoin trades as a hedge against currency debasement. When the dollar strengthens and real yields hold up, the assets marketed as alternatives to fiat money have tended to fall alongside other risk holdings rather than separately from them. That pattern fits the gradual weakening of the combined hard-money and speculative rally that defined the prior six months.