Bitcoin Drops Below $70,000 as Inflation and Nvidia Pressure Crypto

By Grace Kim

Bitcoin traded as low as $68,070 on Friday morning, dropping below $70,000 for the first time since August before recovering to around $69,880, Fast Company reported.

BTC has fallen almost 7% over the past five days and remains more than 20% lower since the beginning of 2026. Fast Company described a slow downward slide since late September, when Bitcoin briefly touched more than $86,500.

Fast Company did not point to one trigger for the entire move. It described overlapping macro pressure, a technology sell-off and leveraged liquidations rather than a single catalyst.

What is driving Bitcoin’s decline?

Fast Company attributed the latest fall to a combination of inflation concerns, likely interest-rate increases and weakness in technology stocks. It said the scandal involving now-former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has exacerbated the tech decline.

The latest Consumer Price Index report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed inflation up 0.4% month over month. The BLS Producer Price Index report released Friday morning showed producer prices up 6.5% year over year, the highest level in several years.

Fast Company said market expectations point to the Fed raising rates in December. Higher rates can reduce trading in speculative assets as investors gravitate toward what the report called “safer” assets.

The CPI and PPI releases cover different comparisons: consumer prices rose from the prior month, while producer prices rose from a year earlier. Fast Company cited both as evidence of rising inflation ahead of the Fed’s December decision.

Fast Company’s rate logic is straightforward: rising consumer and producer prices increase pressure on the Fed to tighten, which can weaken demand for speculative assets.

How did Nvidia’s troubles reach Bitcoin?

Fast Company said tech stocks took a hit in recent days as fallout from the Jensen Huang scandal spread. Nvidia, once the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, has lost more than 27% of its share value over the past month.

The report said the tech sell-off appears to have dragged crypto lower because the two sectors are intermingled to some degree. Investor and entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano made the same connection in a late-Thursday post on X.

Pompliano wrote that investors should “relax, so you can realize that AI and bitcoin are one big trade now.” Fast Company’s read was that Bitcoin and AI-linked technology now move as a linked trade.

Are Bitcoin fund outflows adding to pressure?

Fast Company said outflows from Bitcoin funds may also be contributing to the slide. It did not provide a dollar figure for those outflows.

Fast Company separately cited the closure of more than $1 billion in leveraged crypto positions in recent days. The report said those closures may have reduced demand and added pressure to BTC prices.

Fast Company treated those liquidations as a separate pressure from fund outflows. It said the leveraged closures may have reduced demand for BTC even without assigning a total to the outflows.

The reported liquidations show leverage coming out of the market, while the report left the scale of Bitcoin fund outflows unquantified.

What could decide Bitcoin’s next move?

Fast Company said several factors could determine whether BTC prices recover or continue to stagnate: the Fed’s next moves, Bitcoin funds and upcoming IPOs. The report identified ETF flows, Nvidia results and an Anthropic IPO next week as the immediate tests.

“December’s quarter-point hike stays the base case,” Can-Luca Köymen, an investment strategist at Sygnum Bank, a Swiss digital asset bank, said in a statement provided to Fast Company. “With $1.6bn in crypto liquidations having cleared out much of the leverage, Bitcoin’s next move depends on ETF flows, Nvidia results and the Anthropic IPO next week.”

Bitcoin’s next test runs through ETF flows, Nvidia results and the Anthropic IPO next week, while the Fed’s December decision keeps a quarter-point hike as the base case.