Bitcoin and Ether tumble as AI stock sell-off rattles markets
Digital currency markets took a hit Tuesday as traders pulled back from riskier investments amid growing worries about whether artificial intelligence company stock prices can hold up.
The price of Bitcoin dropped to $103,952 by the end of trading, marking a 2.5% decline for the day and roughly 6% lower compared to where it stood two days earlier. Ether, the digital currency with the second-biggest market value, also fell 2.5% Tuesday and has given up more than 10% across the last two days, sitting at $3,503.
Monday saw Ether drop as much as 9%, falling beneath the important $3,600 level that traders watch closely. The decline happened right after hackers targeted a protocol operating on Ethereum’s network, stealing millions of dollars.
Data from CoinMetrics shows the cryptocurrency was recently trading around $3,600, down 6.6%. That puts it about 25% below the peak of $4,885 it reached on August 22.
The selling picked up after Balancer, a decentralized finance system built on Ethereum, reported losing potentially over $100 million to hackers on Monday. This attack is just the newest in a string of negative developments that have made digital asset investors nervous in recent weeks.
Political and economic pressures mount
Back in mid-October, President Donald Trump said he would impose “massive” tariffs on China because of its limits on rare earth mineral exports. That announcement sent investors running from crypto into safer investments like gold. Even though the president backed off from that threat later, his words triggered a wave of selling that forced the closure of highly leveraged digital asset positions.
Just last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned investors not to count on more interest rate cuts coming soon, which only added to the negative mood already weighing on markets.
“These events have put investors on uneasy footing as we roll into November,” Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise, told CNBC. “Macro volatility notwithstanding, this October’s drawdown appears to have been a healthy, albeit sharp, de-leveraging event that flushed speculative excess from the market.”
Crypto-related stocks are also under pressure
Companies tied to digital currencies also felt the pressure. As reported by Cryptopolitan, Coinbase saw its stock price fall nearly 4%, while Strategy, a firm that holds Bitcoin on its balance sheet, dropped more than 1%.
Traditional stock markets also stumbled Tuesday, pulled down by losses in artificial intelligence-related companies like Palantir as investors questioned whether these high-flying stocks are worth their current prices.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 212 points, or 0.5%. The S&P 500 slipped 0.7%, while the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.9%.
Palantir’s stock lost 7% even though the software company beat Wall Street’s estimates for the third quarter and issued strong predictions for what’s ahead, driven by growth in its artificial intelligence operations. The company expects $1.33 billion in revenue for the current period, topping the $1.19 billion analysts were expecting, according to LSEG. The previous quarter saw revenue jump 63%.
“Their results were good, but markets were disappointed at the lack of company visibility for the whole of 2026,” wrote Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid. He also pointed to worries about Palantir’s valuation.
Palantir, whose stock has climbed 150% this year, trades at more than 200 times forward earnings. Investors buying these AI stocks need the companies to keep pushing their profit and revenue forecasts much higher to make continued purchases make sense. Palantir’s price-to-earnings ratio was approaching 700 going into Tuesday’s trading.
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