Bitcoin briefly drops below $90K, Ether sinks 4% amid rising AI profit fears

Cryptocurrencies fell on Thursday, with bitcoin slipping below the $90,000 mark amid renewed concerns over the profitability of artificial intelligence, which pressured technology stocks. Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) was last down 2% at $90,228.01, and Ether ( ETH-USD ) dropped 4.3% to $3,196.62, wiping out the previous two days of gains and deepening the downturn that began in U.S. trading on Wednesday. Bitcoin dipped in Asia, even as other risk assets rose after the Federal Reserve's rate cut. The original cryptocurrency fell as much as 2.7% to briefly dip below $90,000 on Thursday morning in Singapore, down from an intraday high of $94,490 the day before, according to data compiled by Bloomberg . Smaller tokens, including Ether, XRP, and Solana, also retreated. AI profit concerns resurfaced after Oracle ( ORCL ) shares dropped 7% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, as the IT giant reported mixed fiscal second-quarter results despite securing a steady stream of new deals The global crypto market capitalization edged down 2.88% to $3.06 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. "What we saw last night was even though risk assets were doing well, crypto didn't really want to know about it," Tony Sycamore, market analyst at IG in Sydney, told Reuters . "The crypto space really needs to see more convincing evidence that the washout we saw from that October 10 selloff is complete, and at this point in time it just doesn't look like it's there." Meanwhile, Standard Chartered on Tuesday slashed its expectations that bitcoin would hit $200,000 by the end of 2025, lowering its forecast to $100,000.