Bitcoin Fell Below $35,000 as the Risk-Asset Selloff Deepened

Bitcoin fell below $35,000 on January 22, 2022, extending a broad cryptocurrency selloff that had already driven the largest digital asset to roughly half of its November 2021 peak. Reuters recorded bitcoin at $35,049 late on January 22 after an intraday low of $34,000. The move followed a steep January 21 decline and placed the asset at its lowest level since July 2021.

The break mattered because it challenged two narratives at once. Bitcoin was still often presented as protection against inflation and as an asset independent of conventional finance. Yet the January 22 decline arrived with investors retreating from technology shares and other speculative assets ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting scheduled for January 25–26. The timing supported a risk-asset interpretation, although it did not prove that one macroeconomic factor caused every crypto sale.

A continuous market, not one official close

CoinMarketCap’s dated January 22 snapshot placed bitcoin at $35,030.25, down 3.91% over the provider’s displayed trailing 24-hour window and 18.87% over seven days. The same snapshot showed ether at $2,405.18, down 5.97% over 24 hours and 27.78% over seven days.

Losses extended beyond the two largest networks. CoinMarketCap listed solana at $94.18, with declines of 15.89% over 24 hours and 36.28% over seven days. Those observations show a market-wide repricing rather than an isolated malfunction in Bitcoin.

The figures are not exchange closing prices. Cryptocurrency trades continuously, CoinMarketCap aggregates market information, and the historical page does not expose a single venue or a conventional closing auction. Reuters’ $34,000 low and $35,049 observation came from a different snapshot. The small differences between records are therefore expected and should not be combined into a false universal close.

Macro pressure dominated the event-day explanation

Contemporaneous reporting connected the selloff to weakening appetite for risky assets, inflation concerns and expectations that the Federal Reserve would move toward tighter policy. The Federal Reserve’s calendar confirms that its January policy meeting was scheduled for January 25–26; no decision from that meeting was available on January 22.

That chronology is important. The market was trading expectations, not reacting to a completed January rate decision. Reuters also reported that the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had recorded their largest weekly percentage declines since March 2020 during the week ending January 21. The parallel moves did not establish a fixed correlation, but they weakened the simplest claim that bitcoin would necessarily rise when confidence in high-growth equities fell.

The Washington Post reported a similarly broad retreat on January 22, describing bitcoin as down about 9% over its preceding 24-hour observation and ether down about 15%. Those percentages differ from CoinMarketCap’s dated snapshot because the measurement times and methodologies were not identical. Both sources nevertheless agree on the direction and severity of the selloff.

What January 22 established

By January 22, bitcoin had fallen from an approximately $69,000 November 2021 peak to the mid-$30,000s. That comparison documents drawdown magnitude; it does not identify the traders selling, measure realized losses or show whether leveraged liquidations initiated the move. No liquidation total is used because the surviving sources reviewed here do not provide a sufficiently transparent, synchronized methodology for one.

The defensible event-day conclusion is narrower than declaring a permanent “crypto winter.” January 22 produced a six-month bitcoin low, broad double-digit seven-day losses among major crypto assets and a visible alignment with a conventional risk-off episode. It did not determine the market’s subsequent bottom, the Federal Reserve’s eventual policy path or bitcoin’s long-term role.