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4 min

Posted by

Ashley Murphy, CFP® GFP Fellow

Ashley works with clients to bring strategy, structure, clarity and confidence to their global financial lives and keep it that way. In 2013, Ashley founded Arete Wealth Strategists, a fee-only financial planning and investment management firm for Australian/American expatriates.

June 18, 2026

Crypto’s Gloomy Cycle

Nowhere in the investment universe can you find anything nearly as volatile as cryptocurrencies, and they’re proving that once again. Back in October of last year Bitcoin wallets were bulging, with each coin valued at $126,272. Today the coins are trading hands at a $61,000 price. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s market value has fallen 32% since a high on April 22, and that high was roughly half the all-time high of $4,953 per token back in August of last year. Other cryptocurrencies, including XRP, Solana and Cardano, are experiencing sharp declines.

The downturn has caused roughly $2 trillion in aggregate losses—or, put another way, people holding crypto are down about 50% in this gloomy cycle.

Is there an explanation? Cryptocurrencies are always living on the edge of buyer confidence, since there’s nothing tangible that backs their value. They live as spooky ghosts in the distributed silicon space known as ‘the cloud,’ and all but true believers sometimes wonder whether there is any value there at all. Volatile and speculative assets tend to be the first thing investors jettison during times of uncertainty, and the rise of geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East seem to have affected investor confidence.

In addition, many speculators in the crypto world buy leveraged positions, making a bet that those $126,000 coin will (a phrase you hear in the crypto world) ‘go to the moon.’ Even minor drops in price trigger capital calls and forced liquidations, which are terrible for asset prices.

Fans of cryptocurrency investing say that ‘underlying fundamentals remain intact.’ But one has to wonder: what fundamentals are we talking about in an ‘asset’ that depends entirely on confidence that it has a value in the first place? Nevertheless, don’t be surprised if there’s another 50% movement in these volatile entities. We just don’t know which direction that will take.

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