Crypto News: Number go down

Bitcoin fell so far on Thursday that some were wondering whether the end of crypto was upon us, despite the Trump administration's boosterism—before it recovered some by midday Friday in New York. We turned to investigative reporter Zeke Faux, author of Number Go Up, to explain what's going on. Plus: a new episode of Everybody's Business, Super Bowl bets are moving to prediction markets, and voice-to-text use is on the rise in the office.

If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

Normally when a financial asset craters, analysts can point to some reason for the move. But the wildly gyrating cryptocurrency market—Bitcoin is down by almost half from its all-time high in October even after rallying on Friday—has traders grasping for an explanation. Was a giant fund secretly forced to sell? Is it fear that future quantum computers could threaten Bitcoin's security?

There's a more banal explanation: The price stopped going up.

It's not a joke. For all the talk of blockchain technology, web3, digital gold, tokenization or whatever the latest buzzwords are, crypto's main appeal has long been getting in early and profiting when more people buy and drive up the price. Some advocates are relatively open about this. At the first crypto conference I attended, one speaker called this "number go up technology." He said: "As the price goes higher, more people become aware of it, and buy it in anticipation of the price continuing to climb."

This may sound like a pitch for a pyramid scheme, but it's proved powerful over the years. Bitcoin is 17 years old, and has totally failed as an alternative currency—almost no one uses it for day-to-day transactions—and yet its price has soared as more people have bought in.

As the value increases, however, generating a rising price requires an ever-greater amount of buying. In 2024, that was plausible when US regulators approved crypto exchange-traded funds, allowing regular investors to buy in without signing up for crypto exchanges. After that, Bitcoiners pitched the idea that entire countries would start a race to acquire Bitcoin before it became prohibitively expensive. "You're going to see nation-state FOMO and countries buying it to replace gold reserves," one influential Bitcoiner said in 2024.

Crypto advocates came surprisingly close to achieving this, at least in the US. Donald Trump had once called Bitcoin a "scam against the dollar." But when his 2024 presidential campaign took in about $25 million in donations from Bitcoiners, he flipped to sounding like a crypto bro. "If Bitcoin is going to the moon, as we say, it's going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way," Trump said in a campaign speech at a Bitcoin convention in Nashville.

Trump at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville. Photographer: Bret Carlsen/Bloomberg

Once elected, he came through. His Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a slew of lawsuits against crypto exchanges that would have put them out of business, and some people who'd been convicted of crypto-related crimes received pardons. "I got you guys out of so much trouble," Trump said in July to executives who'd gathered for a signing ceremony for a bill legalizing stablecoins. Congress is now debating a second law that the industry hopes will give it the looser rules it's wanted for years.

Trump even signed an executive order for a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve"—a plan for a US government stockpile. One of his top crypto advisers mused that the US could use the gold in Fort Knox to finance more crypto purchases, though so far the reserve is limited to crypto that's been seized in criminal cases. Some boosters—including Trump's son Eric, who's now involved in several crypto businesses—predicted that the price of a single Bitcoin would hit $1 million.

But an asset that depends on an ever-rising price for its appeal is vulnerable to any fluctuations. Once the price started falling in October, even with the presidential promotion, it was hard to see where crypto would go for a new boost, or where the next, even bigger group of buyers would come from.

One hope was something called "digital asset treasury" companies. These were companies listed on the stock market that accumulated large amounts of crypto. For a time, investors inexplicably drove up their market values well above their crypto holdings, allowing them to buy more and more. Some called it an "infinite money glitch." The biggest, Strategy, is led by bombastic advocate Michael Saylor, dubbed "The Bitcoin Alchemist" by Forbes. It has bought more than $50 billion worth of Bitcoin, 3% of the total supply. Eric Trump has said Saylor advised his family on its crypto investments, and the Trumps helped start another treasury company. But the "digital asset treasury" trade isn't working anymore. Many of the companies are trading at a discount to their holdings, making it hard for them to raise more money to buy more crypto.

Whenever crypto crashes, some speculate that this could be the end of the industry. But it's come back from bigger disasters—like in 2022, after the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, when Bitcoin dropped below $16,000. Back then many big crypto companies failed due to fraud or leveraged bets on prices going up. That doesn't seem to be happening now, giving advocates time to come up with a new reason for "number go up."

On Thursday, after Strategy reported a $12 billion fourth-quarter loss, Saylor reassured investors on a call that the company wouldn't be forced to unload its Bitcoins. "We have a Bitcoin president, and he's intent upon making America the Bitcoin superpower, the crypto capital of the world," Saylor added. It wasn't anything new, but the next morning, Strategy jumped 20% as the price of Bitcoin rebounded. There wasn't an obvious reason.

In Brief

Four of the biggest US technology companies have forecast capital expenditures that will reach about $650 billion in 2026 for new data centers and equipment.
Jeffrey Epstein set up an LLC in 2014 for billionaire financiers Ronald Lauder and Leon Black to share ownership of a $25 million painting, a deal that sheds new light on the extent of his connections to wealth and power.
Trump administration officials are exploring opening an antitrust investigation into US homebuilders as the White House sharpens its focus on tackling the country's housing affordability crisis.
Jeannette zu Fürstenberg invests in Europe's most geopolitically important startups—and throws legendary soirees in her family's castle.

Get the Bloomberg Businessweek print magazine delivered to you and unlimited access to Businessweek stories on Businessweek.com. Annual subscription for $99.
Subscribe

On the Podcast

Elon Musk has long had his eye on Mars, but any real space plan appears to be lost in the cosmos. His more immediate ambitions are decidedly more grounded, with the corporate marriage of SpaceX and xAI. On this week's Everybody's Business podcast from Bloomberg Businessweek, co-hosts Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith explore what this future conglomerate will mean for the economy with Bloomberg News reporter Dana Hull. Plus: Sports business reporter Randall Williams joins us from Santa Clara, California, to talk Super Bowl money, Bad Bunny's politics and why the annual event is incredible business for the NFL.

Listen and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, iHeart and the Bloomberg Terminal

Cost to Drive Away

61%

That's how much the average cost of a new car has risen in the US since 2010, reaching a record $50,326 in December. While incomes have grown over that period, too, they haven't kept up. It took 36.2 weeks of average household income in the US to buy a new car at the end of 2025.

A Change for Sophisticated Bettors

During his more than 15 years as a professional sports gambler, Rufus Peabody has built up an elaborate system of software tools and surrogate bettors that allow him to spot favorable odds offered by bookmakers of every variety and quickly put down millions of dollars on golf, football, basketball and other sports.

Now all that is in flux. Almost overnight, prediction markets such as Kalshi Inc. have begun snapping up large amounts of money that would likely otherwise have ended up on traditional gambling forums. Sophisticated gamblers like Peabody, often referred to either as sharps or sharks, are adjusting their operations accordingly. "It really feels like everything's prediction markets, prediction markets, prediction markets," says Peabody, who began trading heavily on Kalshi in September. "Maybe not for the average recreational bettor, but certainly in the sharp community."

Justina Lee and Ira Boudway write about what that means for Super Bowl Sunday: Gambling Pros Adjust to a Super Bowl on the Prediction Markets

Working Out Loud

Illustration: Mia Oberländer for Bloomberg Businessweek

At some companies, the whispering begins with a single employee, and then spreads from there. Gooseneck microphones start appearing on desks as a growing number of workers forgo keyboards to murmur instructions to their computers instead.

Until recently, voice-to-text software never worked quite right. Now it's become viable thanks to advances in artificial intelligence that take the messiness of speech and package it into something more useful. "Voice mode" is gaining traction with early adopters drawn inexorably to the promise of ever-greater productivity. Dictating emails and reports rather than typing them means, as one startup selling the technology promises, you can do everything "at the speed of thought." The tools also benefit workers with disabilities, as well as software developers trying to give chatbots the kinds of detailed directions they require.

But even a strong product can be a tough sell, Jo Constantz writes, and social norms will play a role: The New Office Oddity: Co-Workers Dictating Everything Into AI

Taking Risks With Health

"Too many companies make too much money on people being sick. It's infuriating. Health insurance CEOs are making millions of dollars a year, and I can't afford to go to the dentist."

Deborah Rayne

Actress based in Verona, New Jersey

More than 20 million Americans are grappling with spiking premiums, and some are taking drastic steps to find affordable health care. Read the full story here.