BTC price: Why are Bitcoin, XRP, and other cryptos down after Fed rate cut when the stock market is up?

As we enter the 2025 home stretch, Bitcoin is once again down, dipping below $90,000 on Thursday, following the Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated interest rate cut by 25 basis points on December 10.

So why is crypto taking a hit, even when markets are up?

Why Bitcoin is faltering

One reason for Bitcoin’s drop after the rate cut is that traders had already fully priced in the cut ahead of the Fed’s announcement.

“Unlike stocks, Bitcoin is already in a bear market, where bad news gets accentuated and good news ignored,” Michael Terpin, author of Bitcoin Supercycle, told Fast Company. “Since the 25 basis point cut was already built in, Bitcoin traders—particularly ETF investors experiencing their first bear market—were looking for more and pressed the sell button.”

Some other reasons for the sell-off: Traders took a long-term look at the macroeconomic environment ahead and got spooked, plus fear of increased inflation in 2026, according to analysts who spoke to Decrypt.

On midday Thursday, at the time of this writing, the digital cryptocurrency (BTC) was trading down over 2%. It’s part of an overall decline in the crypto market that also saw closely watched digital asset XRP fall about 3%, hovering around $2 per token on Thursday, while Ethereum (ETH) was down over 5% and trading at $3,223 at the time of this writing.

Crypto, equities continue to decouple

Meanwhile, the stock market continues to experience gains (the S&P 500 is up over 16% this year), decoupling from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that continue to struggle—marking the first time the crypto and stock markets have split since 2014, Bloomberg reported.

“For most of its history, Bitcoin has been decoupled from stocks. It’s only in recent years that it mimicked tech stocks during risk-on to risk-off swings,” Terpin explained. “Bitcoin follows a four-year cycle, while stock market cycles prior to the money printing bonanza of the pandemic have been 10-year cycles ending in 1929, 1989, 1999-2000, and 2009.”