Recently, bitcoin's price was lower 2.3% over the past 24 hours, underperforming the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index's 1% loss during the same period. Ethereum's ether (ETH) was also down nearly 1%, while litecoin (LTC), polkadot (DOT) and the internet Computer Protocol's token (ICP) led losses with 4%-5% declines.

A notable outperformer was Solana (SOL) with 2.4% gain to $163, though still down from its $170 weekend high.

Bitcoin mining stocks also suffered, but one outlier was TeraWulf (WULF), which recently pivoted to high-performance computing to power artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. It's higher by 12% on Monday.

Checking possible catalysts for today's action, one need look no further than the recent price movement: bitcoin had risen in near-continuous fashion since dipping to just under $60,000 eleven days ago – a modest reversal was surely in the cards at some point. There's also been a sharp rise in interest rates across Western economies on Monday, among them 10 basis point gains in both the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield and the German 10-year Bund yield. Other things being equal, higher rates can often pressure prices of risk assets, bitcoin among them.

Zooming out a bit further, bitcoin – for the moment – remains in the same flat-to-down price channel its been in since recording a record high of $73,700 more than seven months ago. Prior to today, the most recent challenge of the $70,000 level was in late July. It too failed and bitcoin had sunk to under $52,000 days later.

"Wouldn't be unreasonable to get another HL [higher low] potentially with a sweep of $66K, probably where the next opportunity is," well-followed analyst Skew said in an X post.

Upcoming quarterly earnings reports this week for U.S. public companies may weigh on investors' risk appetite at the stock market, and consequently on cryptocurrencies due to the strong correlation between the asset classes, crypto trading firm Wincent noted.

"It's a risk off week given the recent performance of BTC and the earnings week in the U.S. adding to a risk off mentality," a Wincent spokesperson said in a Telegram message. "We can expect a brief pullback this week and then watch out for a potential rally and all-time highs as we push into the U.S. elections."

UPDATE (Oct. 21, 19:52 UTC): Adds comment from trading firm Wincent.

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Krisztian Sandor

Krisztian Sandor recently graduated from NYU's business and economic reporter program as a Fulbright fellow and worked with Reuters and Forbes previously. Originally from Budapest, Hungary, he is now based in New York. He holds BTC and ETH.