The bitcoin price dipped below the $60,000 mark on Friday, which brought it down to a level not seen since October 2024, before Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win the following month. Trump has enacted several policies seen as beneficial to bitcoin and the greater crypto industry, such as the removal of Gary Gensler as the head of the SEC, the establishment of a strategic bitcoin reserve, and a pardon for convicted Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht, a notable part of his campaign. And for a while, the market loved it. After the bitcoin price reached a new all-time high around $125,000 last October, the crypto market as a whole has suffered, with privacy-focused altcoin Zcash also seeing a 60% drop in the last couple of days following the disclosure of a critical bug. For those who don’t remember, the bitcoin price rose from around $66,000 to nearly $110,000 in the weeks that followed Trump’s 2024 election win. However, those previous gains have now been more than completely retraced. While some say the recent bitcoin price weakness has to do with bitcoin treasury company Strategy’s recent sale of a miniscule percentage of their overall bitcoin holdings, others within the industry say the recent sell pressure has more to do with bitcoin holders wanting to gain more exposure to the AI industry, whether it be through the upcoming initial public offerings of OpenAI and Anthropic or the planned $80 billion capital raise by Google parent company Alphabet for the purpose of expanding the infrastructure for Gemini. Of course, then there’s Mark Cuban, who said he sold his bitcoin after it failed to act as “digital gold” during recent geopolitical turmoil.