Bitcoin plunges below $90,000 amid global risk asset selloff

Bitcoin BTC$90,533.33 dropped 3% to below $90,000 during U.S. morning trading on Tuesday after a meltdown in Japan’s government bond market combined with U.S. President Trump’s ongoing tariff threats against Europe to push risk assets sharply lower.

Ether ETH$3,027.68 fell more than 7% over the past 24 hours, sending the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network back below a crucial $3,000 mark for the first time since January 2.

Highlighting altcoin weakness, bitcoin’s grip over the crypto market has been steadily climbing. The bitcoin dominance metric, which shows the largest crypto’s market share of the overall digital asset market capitalization, rose to 59.8% on Tuesday, according to TradingView data.

“Volatility is back and so in keeping with risk assets, I expect bitcoin to trade lower in response and altcoins would likely be most impacted short-term here,” Paul Howard at trading firm Wincent said in a note.

The Nasdaq is lower by nearly 2% on Tuesday. The Nikkei fell 2.5% overnight, while Germany’s DAX declined 1%. Precious metals, though, continue to be the preferred safe haven, with gold soaring 3% and silver 7%, both hitting new record highs.

With today’s decline, bitcoin has given up much of its 2026 gains, now trading just 3% above its level at the start of the year.