Bitcoin fell 2.83% on Coinbase as markets approached Fed week

Bitcoin’s BTC-USD market on Coinbase Exchange fell 2.83% from its first trade to its last trade during the UTC day ending January 25, 2026, as a broader cryptocurrency selloff accelerated before the Federal Reserve’s January 27–28 meeting.

The decline was consequential less because it crossed a permanent technical boundary than because it showed how quickly a thin Sunday market could reprice ahead of a dense week for monetary policy, corporate earnings and U.S. fiscal negotiations. Contemporaneous reports also recorded declines across ether and several other large crypto assets, indicating that the move was not confined to bitcoin.

The dated market record

Coinbase Exchange’s one-day candle for BTC-USD began at 00:00 UTC on January 25. It recorded an opening price of $89,082.16, a high of $89,177.95, a low of $86,000.13 and a closing price of $86,561.94. The difference between the opening and closing trades was $2,520.22, or 2.83%, calculated as the change divided by the opening price.

The candle recorded 5,428.58128865 BTC in trading volume. That is base-asset volume on one exchange, not global bitcoin turnover or a dollar-volume estimate. Coinbase’s documentation defines each candle as a grouped interval containing its first trade, last trade, high, low and volume, while warning that historical rate data may be incomplete when intervals contain no ticks.

CoinDesk reported at 18:13 UTC on January 25 that bitcoin was trading around $87,800, approximately 2% lower over its trailing 24-hour window. Ether was near $2,880, while solana, XRP and cardano were reported 3% to 5% lower over the same rolling period. Those figures do not conflict with Coinbase’s final UTC close: they refer to an earlier observation, a rolling measurement window and potentially different underlying venues.

Why the move mattered

The selloff carried bitcoin from above $89,000 to an intraday low barely above $86,000 on Coinbase. For institutions using bitcoin as a continuously traded risk gauge, that roughly $3,178 high-to-low range showed meaningful repricing before traditional U.S. markets reopened.

The Federal Reserve’s contemporaneous calendar scheduled a two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting for January 27 and January 28, with a statement at 2 p.m. Eastern and a press conference at 2:30 p.m. Eastern on January 28. That schedule was verifiable on January 25. The outcome was not yet known and should not be projected backward into this record.

Reports published during the selloff attributed the cautious mood to several possible factors, including the approaching Fed decision, political disagreement over federal funding and a heavy technology-earnings calendar. Those explanations describe the information traders were watching; they do not prove that any single headline caused bitcoin’s decline.

What the numbers do not establish

Bitcoin trades continuously across exchanges, stablecoin pairs and national currencies. It has no universal closing auction. A UTC Coinbase candle therefore provides a reproducible venue-specific measurement, not an official worldwide bitcoin close.

The evidence also cannot determine how much of the decline came from discretionary selling, automated risk controls, derivatives liquidations or transfers between venues. Contemporaneous liquidation estimates cited by news outlets depended on third-party derivatives aggregation and are excluded from the central calculation here.

The defensible conclusion for January 25, 2026 is narrow: bitcoin declined materially on Coinbase while other major crypto assets also weakened, and the market entered the January 27–28 policy meeting with visibly reduced risk appetite. Claims about a lasting trend or the eventual policy outcome required evidence that was not available on January 25.