#BTC跌4% Bitcoin Falls Below 71,000: It’s Not Just the Price That’s Falling—The Market Has Lost Its “Common Anchor”

It fell 1.79% yesterday and 4.12% today. The drop is accelerating, and that in itself is more worth watching than the exact level it has fallen to.
But focusing only on price means missing something more important. Grayscale published a report on November 12 that made a key point: over the past three years, Bitcoin’s price movements explained only about 50% of the return differences across crypto market sectors.
Put another way, Bitcoin is no longer the market’s single, common anchor. This shift happens to explain why so many people are confused right now: Why do some still feel they “can’t make sense of things” even though the Fear and Greed Index is at 20? Because sentiment indicators are still unified, while pricing logic has already fractured.

01 Market action: The drop widened from 1.79% to 4.12%
First, the decline widened from 1.79% to 4.12%, while the Fear and Greed Index fell only from 28 to 20. If sentiment is a function of price, that decline is in line; but if sentiment is a function of expectations, it suggests concerns about what comes next weigh more heavily than the drop that has already happened.
Second, the intraday low of 70,688 has already reached the edge just above 70,000. This level happens to be an area that was repeatedly discussed during the previous market cycle. When prices enter this kind of zone, the focus shifts from “fundamentals” to “positioning”—because further downside triggers not valuation judgments, but stop-loss orders.

02 This Grayscale report matters more than the price
The report’s core consists of three sets of figures, each worth unpacking.
First: Bitcoin’s price movements explain only about 50% of return differences across crypto market sectors. This means the other half comes from factors specific to the sectors and individual assets—for example, a sector’s narrative, a project’s progress, or the liquidity structure of a particular asset class. In other words, the “watch BTC to trade every coin” approach now has only half the explanatory power it used to.
Second: Correlations between crypto sectors have fallen from previous highs, and market performance is becoming increasingly divergent. This is a direct result of the first point. When correlations are high, the market behaves like a single whole, rising and falling in sync; when correlations fall, the market becomes several submarkets, each priced on its own.
Third: Annualized volatility varies by sector—about 43% for Bitcoin, 49% for payments, and as high as 85% for AI.
These figures are the most informative: they show that “diversification” changes not the absolute level of risk, but its structure.
Grayscale itself makes this point in the report: lower correlations do not mean lower investment risk.
Taken together, these three sets of figures point to one conclusion: the crypto market is shifting from “one beta market” to “multiple alpha markets.” In the past, you only needed to assess Bitcoin’s direction; now you also have to judge which sectors capital is flowing into and how they are being priced. This hasn’t made things simpler—it’s made them harder. And that helps explain why the current market action looks like it is “falling for no reason.” When the market still has a common anchor, declines have a unified explanation; once that anchor comes loose, declines become “each falling on its own,” which makes them look like they have “no reason.”

03 Fear and Greed Index at 20: Sentiment is still unified, but logic has fractured
There’s a contradiction here that’s easy to overlook. The Fear and Greed Index has fallen from 28 to 20, entering “extreme fear.” This is a unified sentiment indicator—it doesn’t distinguish between sectors or assets, but gives the entire market a single score.
But Grayscale tells us that pricing logic has already diverged. This creates a mismatch: using a unified sentiment indicator to explain a market that has already fractured. The result is that the index tells you “everyone is fearful,” but some sectors in your portfolio have fallen much more than BTC, while others have fallen less. You can’t use “fear” as a single variable to explain them all.
The more practical issue is that a reading of extreme fear cuts both ways. On the one hand, it means selling pressure has been heavily released, and the most pessimistic moments often coincide with short-term bottoming zones; on the other hand, fear can persist for a long time, and “extreme fear” followed by more “extreme fear” is the norm. So this index can tell you the “position,” but not the “timing.” That’s also why this piece doesn’t say whether you “should buy the dip.” In a market that has lost its common anchor, the term “buy the dip” is itself imprecise—you first have to specify which sector’s bottom you’re buying.

04 So what is the nature of this decline?
Putting the first three sections together, we can offer a more accurate description than “the bad news is all priced in.” This decline wasn’t caused by any one piece of bad news, but by the combination of “the disappearance of the pricing anchor” and “persistent selling pressure.”
The previous day, we had already seen consecutive net outflows from ETFs and arbitrage traders unwinding basis trades—that was structural buying stepping aside; today, the decline doubled and the Fear and Greed Index shifted within a single day—that was sentiment catching up on the downside. When the two coincide, prices take on a “the further they fall, the faster they drop” shape.
And the disappearance of the “common anchor” changes how the decline spreads.
It used to be “BTC falls → the whole market falls”; now it’s “BTC falls → sectors fall in order according to their own liquidity.”
Sectors with poorer liquidity and narratives more dependent on sentiment fall earlier and harder; sectors with genuine independent drivers may even move in the opposite direction.
That’s the other side of what Grayscale calls “diversified sources of returns”: it also means diversified sources of losses. Lower correlations don’t reduce risk; they just turn “losing together” into “losing separately.”

05 Several signals worth watching next
No predictions about direction—just things that can be verified. One Whether the decline narrows.
A move from -1.79% to -4.12% is an acceleration; if the decline narrows noticeably on a given trading day and no new low is made, that’s the first sign that selling pressure is easing
Two Whether the Fear and Greed Index finds a floor around 20.
If it continues falling toward single digits, sentiment is still deteriorating; if it starts to recover, that usually corresponds to short-term selling pressure having run its course
Three Whether sector declines start to diverge.
By Grayscale’s figures, AI sector volatility is twice that of BTC—if AI-related assets fall significantly more than BTC during the decline, that’s a normal “queuing by liquidity” transmission; if the reverse happens, it means capital is rotating between sectors
Four Whether ETF flows shift from persistent net outflows to narrowing outflows.
This is direct evidence of whether structural buying is returning
Five Price action around 70,000.
Watch just one thing: after a breakdown, does the price quickly recover, or does it move lower on heavy volume? The former is a liquidity gap; the latter is a trend

The easiest thing to overlook in this downturn: while the market is still looking for a “common anchor,” the most common mistake is using Bitcoin’s price action to explain every asset. Grayscale’s 50% figure is a reminder of this habit—it doesn’t say Bitcoin is unimportant; it says “Bitcoin is no longer enough.”$BTC

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