Bitcoin drops to $60,000 range for first time since April 7
Strategy's sell disclosure seen weighing on market sentiment
U.S. financial sector accelerates on-chain infrastructure buildout
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The digital asset market continues to struggle even as the United States accelerates its shift to on-chain infrastructure. Price volatility and exchange-traded fund outflows are pressuring short-term investor sentiment, but traditional financial institutions are expanding efforts to bring blockchain-based payment and settlement infrastructure into the mainstream financial system.
According to CoinMarketCap, bitcoin was trading at $67,080 as of 3:48 p.m. Tuesday, down 4.23 percent over the previous 24 hours. Ether fell 5.36 percent to $1,871. Ripple (XRP) and Solana dropped 2.06 percent and 5.56 percent, respectively, as major digital assets broadly weakened.
Bitcoin's slide into the $60,000 range marked its lowest level since April 7, roughly two months ago. The price stood at around $105,888 a year earlier, a decline of approximately 36.6 percent over the past year. It has also dropped about 18 percent from the $82,000 level it reached last month.
Luke Nolan, senior research analyst at CoinShares, said Monday local time that bitcoin had fallen below $70,000 for the first time in two months, attributing the sell-off largely to sustained ETF redemptions. He noted that U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have recorded continuous net outflows since May 15.
"Spot bitcoin ETFs are seeing their longest streak of net outflows since their launch in January 2024," Nolan said, adding that $3 billion had left the funds over the past two weeks. Spot ether ETFs also suffered significant outflows, with approximately $2.6 billion exiting over the same period.
Redemption pressure broadened across digital asset investment products. Last week, digital asset investment products recorded net outflows of $1.67 billion — the second-largest weekly outflow of the year. The pullback reflects dampened appetite for risk assets as the U.S. Federal Reserve maintains its hawkish stance and expectations for interest rate cuts recede.
Strategy, widely regarded as a leading digital asset treasury company, added to market unease with a large bitcoin sell disclosure. In a filing submitted to the SEC on Monday, Strategy said it sold 32 bitcoin between May 26 and May 31 at an average price of $77,135, for total proceeds of approximately $2.5 million. It was the company's first bitcoin sale since December 2022.
Nolan noted that the 32 bitcoin sold represented just 0.0038 percent of Strategy's holdings of 843,706 bitcoin, but said "the market reacted more to the symbolism than the scale of the sale." Strategy's share price fell 5.85 percent on the day of the disclosure and dropped a further 9.15 percent on Monday local time.
Despite the weakness in spot markets, U.S. financial institutions are moving faster to build out on-chain infrastructure. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced on May 27 that it would connect its tokenized securities platform to the Stellar network. The plan calls for assets held in custody by its subsidiary the Depository Trust Company (DTC) — including equities, ETFs and U.S. government bonds — to be converted into tokenized form on the blockchain and made available on the Stellar network.
The DTCC also outlined a phased rollout of its tokenization service, with a limited launch of tokenized transactions set for July before expanding to a full service in October. More than 50 organizations have joined a working group to verify operational and technical procedures, including traditional financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, Franklin Templeton and Wells Fargo, as well as digital asset companies including Circle and Ripple.
Crypto derivatives infrastructure is also expanding. CME Group announced Monday that a 24-hour, around-the-clock trading system for digital asset futures and options — including bitcoin and ether — had gone live. More than 7,200 digital asset futures and options contracts were executed during the first weekend after trading began on May 29, with notional trading volume reaching approximately $50 million.
The move opens the door for institutional investors to manage digital asset trading risk more flexibly. Previously, the spot digital asset market operated around the clock while derivatives trading hours were restricted, making it difficult to limit losses during sudden price swings. Tim McCourt, CME Group's global head of equities, foreign exchange and alternative products, said the shift to around-the-clock trading "ensures we can provide the continuous price discovery and trading confidence that investors around the world need."
The AI agent economy is emerging as another driver of digital asset payment infrastructure expansion. Robinhood last month unveiled a service allowing customers to connect AI agents to handle stock trading and credit card payments on their behalf. Customers can set up a separate trading account and virtual card, and define the funds and payment limits available to the AI agent.
Yang Hyeon-gyeong, a researcher at IM Securities, said the development shows that "the role of financial platforms is expanding from simple transaction and payment intermediation to infrastructure that controls and approves the actions of AI agents." She added that a structure in which agents interpret customer intent and execute transactions based on set conditions "signals that the user experience of financial services is shifting from a human-centered UI to an agent-centered authorization framework."
Yang forecast that future competition in finance will center not on acquiring customers but on securing customers' "agency." She said that while financial firms in the past focused on capturing deposits, transaction frequency and card spending, "going forward, what may matter more is not which financial app a customer opens, but which financial firm is granted payment and transaction authority by the customer's agentic AI."
Collaboration between big tech and digital asset companies is also advancing in the AI agent payment space. Amazon Web Services (AWS) last month unveiled "Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments" together with Coinbase and Stripe, enabling AI agents to make USDC-based payments when accessing web content and APIs.
Google Cloud, working with the Solana Foundation, launched "Pay.sh," a payment service based on the x402 standard that allows AI agents to settle API usage fees in stablecoins on the Solana network without a separate account. Coinbase launched "Agentic.Market," an x402-based service discovery and payment platform, in April, creating an environment where agents can find paid services and pay for them in USDC.
Lee Jun-ho, a researcher at Hana Securities, said the activation of both B2B and B2C agents "will benefit not only the broader blockchain sector but also digital asset-related companies." As big tech firms adopt blockchain as payment infrastructure, he said, digital assets are poised to function as a standard for financial infrastructure and act as a market catalyst.
Lee added that "as we move into the second half of the year, on-chain metrics driven by agents, real-world asset tokenization and policy expectations will be reflected in an upward trend." He said a short-term bottom could form through August given the current market cycle, making "a strategy of gradually increasing exposure to spot assets a valid approach."
Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said at the "2026 BOK International Conference" held Monday afternoon at the Bank of Korea annex that bitcoin, which "set out to become a currency 17 years ago," has failed to achieve efficient use as a medium of exchange, and that stablecoins resemble casino chips and lack practical utility.
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