Crypto Declines as Nasdaq Selloff Highlights Growing Tech Correlation, StanChart Says

Cryptocurrencies continued their overnight decline into Monday amid a sharp selloff in Nasdaq equities futures that Standard Chartered Bank said highlights the growing relationship between the valuation of digital assets and the technology sector. Bitcoin (BTC) was down more than 5.7%, trading at about $98,756 before the bell. Ethereum (ETH) decreased by more than 7.6% to trade at $3,055. The global crypto market cap was down 6.9% to $3.35 trillion. The CoinDesk Market Index fell about 7% in the past 24 hours. Ahead of Monday's opening bell, Nasdaq futures were down 3.7% after a new open-source model launched by Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek raised questions over America's technological dominance, according to Bloomberg. "Today's 3% decline in Nasdaq futures (on DeepSeek news), so far, has driven digital asset liquidation overnight," Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, wrote in a note early Monday. "This relationship highlights the continued strong (and strengthening) relationship between digital assets and the tech sector. BTC remains strongly correlated to Nasdaq, much more so than it does to gold."The 11 US-traded spot-price bitcoin exchange-traded funds ended last week with combined net assets of $123.06 billion, up from $121.28 billion a week earlier, data compiled by SoSoValue showed. Ethereum ETFs closed last week with $12.21 billion in combined total net assets, down from $12.66 billion in the prior week. The Federal Reserve is scheduled to announce its decision on interest rates on Wednesday. Investors will also watch the key personal income and outlays report for December, which includes the Fed's preferred inflation metric, scheduled to be released on Friday.