Bitcoin is crashing, tech stocks are dropping, and investors are scrambling to find the next best thing.
Prudent investors, a significant minority which would likely include anyone with more then five percent of their assets in precious metals (about 5% of all U.S. investors) are rotating into industrials, basic materials, miners, and cash.
As bitcoin dipped into territory not seen since November, 2024, this headline catches the eye:
Bitcoin sinks below $70,000 after Bessent says the US government can't tell banks to bail out crypto
The story, by Ines Ferré and Grace O'Donnell, was updated Thursday, February 5, 2026 at 7:02 am ET. It has generated more 1,800 comments and counting, most of them not friendly toward bitcoin and crypto in general. Most articles on Yahoo! Finance are lucky to receive a couple hundred comments, making this one a standout.
The headline itself relays an important signal: In what universe does the Secretary of the Treasury even consider "bailing out" any risk asset. Further, in what parallel bizarro-universe does a sitting representative - Rep. Brad Sherman, D, CA-32) - even ask such a question. As a financial powerhouse, the U.S. is in uncharted waters. Refreshingly, Bessent balked at the notion repeatedly, informing the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday that he doesn't have the authority to instruct banks to buy bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.
He also dismissed the notion that the U.S. Treasury would prop up bitcoin.
That was the good news. The bad news came from far outside congressional chambers, on trading desks around the world, as bitcoin, the granddaddy of the crypto universe. continued its deep decline from a high of $124,310.60 on October 7, 2025, to it's current low, as of this writing, at 8:35 am ET, of $69,345.04, a four-month drop of 44.22%, with no end in sight.
The chart below paints an unpleasant picture of bitcoin's demise, comparing it to two other alternatives to the U.S. dollar, which actually are stores of value, mediums of exchange and have been money for thousands of years. It speaks for itself.
With bitcoin "whales" discovering that their hands are bleeding from repeated attempts to catch the falling crypto knife, the rout is likely to accelerate from here. In terms of fundamental analysis, there was pocket of support from $75,000 to $85,000, but that's already gone. The next stop is in a range around $64,000. After that, it's free-fall down to $30,000 or lower.
At some point, as with all speculative assets, sone people will become interested in buying bitcoin, but at what price? $50,000, $35,000, $20,000? Because bitcoin is divisible out to eigt decimal points, it's possible for the price of one bitcoin (of the 20 million already out there) to fall under one dollar. It's conceivable that one wallet could hold all the bitcoin in the world, at $0.001 per unit. where it eventually resides depends on liquidity and levels risk management by miners, who won't be so eager to spend fortunes on computers and energy to mine the blockchain, and the OG whales who own 90% of the available stock.
As bitcoin proceeds down the path to insolvency, which would likely be defined by criminals refusing to accept it, all the other crypto plans will be washed down the drain with it. Blockchain technology is a useful function. Truing to turn it into value seems now to have been a fool's errand.
The money that brought bitcoin to its previous glorified heights is the same money that is exiting, bringing down to what appears to be some very undignified lows. A lot of money is changing hands and it will be looking for places to go. Some will sit in cash. Some will go into stocks, some to precious metals, some to other speculative assets. Hardly any of it will go into fixed income, like corporate bonds or treasuries.
At the same time, it appears the promise of the other great speculation, AI, has lost its mojo. It's not so much that AI is useless - it has great potential and is already employed in a good number of business activities - it's that the money being spent pursuing profits from selling subscription services by the big tech names doesn't add up. Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and others are pouring hundreds of billions into data centers without a clear pathway to profitability and Wall Street has sniffed it out.
Just last night, Alphabet (GOOG), parent of Google, released blowout fourth quarter numbers, sending the stock soaring after hours, but overnight, the mood changed, as investors worried about the massive CapEx the company is planning. Google said it would significantly increase its 2026 capital expenditure to between $175 billion and $185 billion, more than double its 2025 spending.
Shares of Alphabet are down five percent pre-market.
Elsewhere, Microsoft Corp. reported solid earnings last week, but investors zeroed in on stagnating growth in its Azure cloud-computing business and the more than $100 billion it’s expected to dole out in capital spending this year. Consequently, the stock tumbled 10%, and the selling has carried over into this week. Microsoft is down more than 15% since January 28.
Thursday, before the open, a few more names of companies reporting fourth quarter results and their pre-market moves:
- Shell (SHEL) - big miss, worst in five years, shares down 2.5%
- Estee Lauder (EL) - restructuring, tariffs harmed earnings, stock down 10%
- Barrick (B) - solid earnings, stock down 2.5%
- ConocoPhillips (COP) - earnings miss, stock down 3-4%
- Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) - earnings beat, shares up 2%
- Cummings (CMI) - revenue beat, EPS miss, shares down 4%
If you liked crypto, there are some bridges for sale...
At the Close, Wednesday, February 4, 2026:
Dow: 49,501.30, +260.31 (+0.53%)
NASDAQ: 22,904.58, -350.61 (-1.51%)
S&P 500: 6,882.72, -35.09 (-0.51%)
NYSE Composite: 22,975.59, +94.38 (+0.41%)
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