Crypto Market Sell-off Extended Into Its Second Week as Bitcoin (BTC) Prices Dipped to Nearly $80,000

A crypto market sell-off extended into its second week as bitcoin (BTC) prices stooped to nearly $80,000 late Sunday, triggering a fresh decline in major tokens and altcoins.

Crypto prices extended their sell-off into a second week as bitcoin (BTC) slid to nearly $79,000 on Sunday, levels last seen in December 2023, sparking further declines in major tokens and altcoins.

Dogecoin (DOGE) and Cardano’s ADA led losses with a nearly 10% slump over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data at press time. XRP dropped more than 7%, while BNB Chain’s BNB, ether (ETH) and tron's TRX) slid 5%, and BTC lost 4%.

This has seen the well-followed crypto fear and green index slip to a multi-year low reading of 17 — which indicates ‘extreme fear’ — in its lowest level since mid-2023.

The index measures investor emotions and ranges from 0 (lowest sentiment) to 100 (highest sentiment), helping identify whether investors are too scared (potential buying opportunity) or too greedy (possible market correction).

It is based on price volatility, momentum, social media sentiment, Google trends data, and bitcoin’s overall market share. It tends to act as a contrarian indicator in the short term.

Major tokens have now fully pared all gains made after President Donald Trump announced a strategic crypto reserve in the U.S. earlier this month.

Tokens including XRP, Solana’s SOL, and ADA had rallied as much as 60% in days following Trump’s announcement on Feb.12 that he is planning to build up a strategic crypto reserve in the U.S., which sparked traders’ hopes for a windfall of buying plans from the U.S. for majors.

However, Trump later repurposed previously seized BTC holdings as the reserve and said non-BTC seized assets would be considered a ‘stockpile’ of tokens to be used for replenishing the main reserve.

An anticipated White House Crypto Summit on Mar.7 also ended in a “nothingburger” with no bold announcements made, despite expectations for a new chapter in U.S. crypto regulation.

The summit resulted in a framework for stablecoin legislation by August and a promise of lighter regulation, but these outcomes did not stimulate the market as anticipated.

Global markets take a hit amid Trump's tariff spat

The crypto market downturn comes amid broader weakness in global markets, which are facing headwinds from an escalating tariff war and uncertainty over the economic outlook.

A widely tracked dollar index (DYX), a measure of the U.S. dollar’s strength, is at its lowest since November, to under 105.(An DXY index above 100 is considered strong, which tends to put pressure on risk assets.)

Traders will be closely watching for any signs of a shift in the broader market trends in the coming weeks and months. They will also be looking for macroeconomic data and decisions from central bankers for cues on further positioning.

“The summit signaled for more optimism, despite expectations for more substantial announcements as crypto assets continue to follow US equities in a negative trend in the wake of February’s job report that generally saw stable results despite government job cuts and Payrolls jobs variant saw smaller than expected jobs gains.,” Kevin Guo, Director of HashKey Research, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message.

Investors don’t expect a reversal of the trend as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell assured that the Fed will continue to show patience on a bumpy road to a 2% inflation rate, which further lowered expectations of a rate cut this year, Guo noted.

Traders have been buying short-dated treasuries, per Bloomberg, expecting the Federal Reserve to resume cutting interest rates as soon as May to keep the economy from deteriorating — a sign of hope for crypto bulls and lower rates tend to create inflow into riskier assets.