Is this the beginning of the end for Bitcoin?
A Bitcoin (BTC) sell-off on Thursday is sending the cryptocurrency down again today by 3% to $86,410.50 in midday afternoon trading, after a rally had it above $93,000 earlier in the day. It’s now hit its lowest level since April.
It’s part of an overall decline in the crypto market that also saw closely watched digital asset XRP (XRP-USD) falling below $2.00 per token during the day, while Ethereum (ETH-USD) shed nearly 3% and was trading at $2,832 in the late afternoon at the time of this writing.
Both stock market and Bitcoin investors were briefly riding high on chip maker Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings report, which came in after Wednesday’s market close and beat the street’s expectations. Revenue came in at $57.01 billion, and adjusted earnings per share (EPS) at $1.30, both well above Wall Street analyst estimates.
But as the day progressed, stock markets turned negative again, and Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) found its own stock falling down over 2% as investors remain spooked at the prospect of an AI bubble. Some experts, including Wall Street oracle Michael Burry, head of hedge fund Scion Asset Management, predict the bubble resulting from inflated valuations and inflated earnings.
Burry, who both predicted and then shorted the 2008 housing bubble, has suggested that massive spending by tech companies like Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI, which are pouring record-amounts of money into artificial intelligence (AI) while also laying off scores of employees, are overstating their profits by artificially boosting earnings through aggressive accounting practices.