Bitcoin fell to just above $64,000 amid a stock market rout and weakening sentiment for risk assets, including cryptocurrencies. The plunge led to over $250 million worth of bullish bets being liquidated, the worst hit since early July. Bitcoin is priced around $64,200 at the time of writing, a drop of almost 3.5% in the last 24 hours. The broader digital asset market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), has fallen 5.6%. The slump follows the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index posting its biggest drop since 2022 after Google parent company Alphabet and Tesla reported mixed quarterly earnings.

Ether has fallen over 8% in the last 24 hours, faring worse than the wider crypto market, following $810 million worth of outflows from Grayscale's Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHE). Most of the other ETH ETFs continued in the green during the Wednesday session, with BlackRock's ETHA leading the pack at $283.9 million of net inflows, followed by Bitwise's ETHW at $233.6 million and Fidelity's FETH with $145.7 million. ETHE bucking this trend echoes the plight of Grayscale's bitcoin equivalent, GBTC, which experienced heavy outflows when it listed earlier this year. Ether is trading at $3,165 at the time of writing.

The aggregate market capitalization of the stablecoin sector, which includes hundreds of coins, jumped to over $164 billion for the first time since the collapse of Terra in May 2022, according to data source DefiLlama and trading firm Wintermute. It had been languishing around the $160 billion mark. The expansion "indicates growing investor optimism, underpinning a bullish outlook," Wintermute said in a note shared with CoinDesk. "The increase in stablecoin supply indicates that money is being deposited into on-chain ecosystems to generate economic activity, either through direct on-chain purchases that can catalyze price appreciation or yield-generation strategies that could improve [market] liquidity. This activity ultimately fosters positive on-chain growth."

Risk assets slid Thursday as China's second interest-rate cut in a week sparked concerns of instability in the world's second-largest economy.

In equity markets, Germany's DAX, France's CAC and the eurozone's Euro Stoxx 50 fell over 1.5%, and futures tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were slightly lower after the index's more than 3% slide on Wednesday, according to data source Investing.com.

Early Thursday, the People's Bank of China announced a surprise, off-schedule cut in its one-year medium-term lending facility rate to 2.3% from 2.5%, injecting 200 billion yuan ($27.5 billion) of liquidity into the market. That's the biggest reduction since 2020.

"The decision by the PBoC to cut rates in a surprise move only added to the sense of panic," Ilan Solot, senior global strategist at Marex Solutions, said in a note shared with CoinDesk.

Solot noted the ongoing "steepening of the U.S. Treasury yield curve" as a threat to risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.

- Omkar Godbole