KEY POINTS
- Bitcoin fell below $72,000 for the first time since Aug. 20, leaving it down 7.4% for the month so far.
- Nvidia shares fell nearly 13% at the Wall Street open after CEO Jensen Huang resigned with immediate effect.
- Crypto liquidations reached $730 million over 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data cited by Cointelegraph.
Bitcoin dropped below $72,000 on Thursday, its lowest level since Aug. 20, as selling returned to US equities after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned, Cointelegraph reported.
TradingView data showed BTC/USD setting new multimonth lows after the Wall Street open. The pair's losses for the month so far reached 7.4%.
Nvidia's stock was the main source of pressure. NVDA fell almost 13% at the open after the company announced that Huang was leaving immediately. Nvidia said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress had agreed to serve as interim chief executive. She will keep her CFO role during that time, until a permanent successor is named.
Economist Mohamed El-Erian called the resignation a significant development with consequences beyond Nvidia. He wrote that the situation would stay in focus as the company copes with the loss of its influential founder and as various political investigations, both formal and informal, move forward.
The broader market was less affected. The Nasdaq Composite was trading 0.6% lower at the time of writing, avoiding major losses at the open despite the sharp decline in Nvidia.
On the technical side, Bitcoin slipped back under its 21-week simple moving average, which stood at $73,078 on Wednesday. CoinGlass data showed the price cutting through a patch of bid liquidity, and crypto liquidations over 24 hours reached $730 million.
Macroeconomic data is also in view. On Tuesday, the October Consumer Price Index came in above expectations, and markets responded by pricing in more interest-rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. Attention now turns to the US Producer Price Index report due Friday.
Keith Alan, cofounder of the trading platform Material Indicators, pointed to that release as the next catalyst. He wrote on X that a soft PPI reading, lowering the odds of aggressive hikes in December or January, could change the market's tone. He added that a reading in line with expectations could leave the price moving between nearby areas of order-book liquidity.
