Crypto markets remained under pressure Monday, with digital assets continuing to mirror sharp declines in the embattled software sector as a key industry ETF dropped to another 52-week low.
Bitcoin attempted a mild rebound after a steep overnight slide, but that recovery quickly faded during U.S. morning trading as risk appetite deteriorated across global markets. By around midday on the East Coast, bitcoin was trading near $65,400, still nursing heavy losses over the prior 24 hours.
The pullback coincided with renewed weakness in U.S. equities. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100 each declined more than 1%, weighed down by fresh selling in software companies and private equity firms.
The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF slid another 5% to a new one-year low and is now down roughly 35% since October. Investors have increasingly questioned whether generative AI tools could disrupt legacy software revenue models. Regardless of the long-term outcome, traders have recently treated crypto as part of the same trade, with bitcoin’s movements showing a near-perfect correlation with IGV.
At the same time, broader concerns are building that the AI-driven investment surge may be inflating financial excesses, raising fears of a potential credit event reminiscent of the 2008 financial crisis. Those anxieties have weighed heavily on alternative asset managers, many of which have significant exposure to software-related assets.
Blue Owl Capital — which recently sold assets to meet investor liquidity demands — fell another 3.5% Monday and is now down about 32% year to date. Other major players, including Blackstone, Ares Management, and Apollo Global Management, extended their recent losses, dropping between 6% and 8%.
Crypto often trades as a high-beta extension of technology stocks and broader liquidity conditions, and Monday’s decline reinforced that pattern. Although bitcoin has managed to hold above its early February lows, it remains range-bound between $60,000 and $70,000 as overall risk sentiment stays fragile.
Adding to the cautious backdrop is lingering uncertainty over global trade policy after the Supreme Court of the United States limited President Donald Trump’s previous use of sweeping tariffs, according to Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group.
The development helped fuel a broader risk-off environment, with investors stepping back from speculative positions. In that setting, bitcoin has behaved less like “digital gold” and more like a leveraged bet on overall market direction.
