Crypto markets pull back as BTC stalls below $90K, XRP and SOL lead altcoin losses

The crypto market is trading well in the red on Thursday, with all but Tron, the top 10 coins by market cap, shedding profits they had made during the week.

Leading coins BTC, ETH, XRP, and SOL have all lost more than 1.5% in the last 24 hours amid a market bloodbath that wiped 1.7% off the total market cap, according to Coingecko data. 

Bitcoin had initially given the market glimpses of a positive marketwide correction after it crossed the $90,000 mark for the first time this week on Wednesday. However, traders seemingly chose to cash out their winnings, leaving the top coin by market cap in free fall.

Crypto market winding down the week in profit shedding

After the world’s largest cryptocurrency slipped below $88,500 in Thursday’s earlier trading session, most of the tokens followed, extending a choppy week of intraday swings. According to Coinglass liquidation data, the last 24 hours have seen the market lose more $300 million in forced selling.

Second in line, Ether hovered near $2,950, while popular altcoins Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin witnessed steeper intraday declines, falling between 2% and 4% during the session. Some market watchers believe that if selling intensifies, prices of several tokens may start testing their support levels and take the sector back to December’s bearish spell. 

Moreover, a brief run during the start of the year had previously helped prevent Bitcoin from slipping below the $86,558 threshold. A sustained break beneath that band could deepen losses, but if bulls manage to hold the price level above $87,000 before the week ends, market sentiment would stabilize.

The fifth-largest coin by market cap, XRP, is also moving toward $1.88, but a resistance wall has been set at the $1.92 to $1.94 range. A short-lived surge in trading volume had briefly pushed prices higher, but momentum quickly faded, and the token slipped back into consolidation, now trading at $1.86 at the time of this publication.

Open interest in SOL futures dropped 1.40% over the past 24 hours to $7.42 billion, per Coinglass. Funding rates also turned negative, printing -0.0042%, a sign that newer participants favored short positions while closing longs and reducing their leverage.

Despite the day-to-day volatility, selling pressure has seemingly eased compared with last weekend’s downturn. That pause allowed digital assets to attempt a short-lived rebound, though a chance for a defined conviction is weak. Many traders have been hesitant to commit to new positions without a clear macro direction.

Market pullback reacts to the US Fed stance and policy persistence  

The Federal Open Market Committee kept its benchmark interest rate at 3.50% to 3.75% on January 28, its first policy decision of 2026. According to the central bank, the choice was “loosely neutral” as last year’s rate cuts continue to filter through the economy.

“Overall, the Fed just wants to stand pat. They feel they’ve got time to wait and see,” former Fed Vice Chair Roger Ferguson said in a CNBC interview Monday. “This feels like a wait-and-see meeting, and we should all be listening to see if there’s any hint or a bias towards a future action.”

After his press briefing on rates, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed queries about the US government’s political influence over monetary policy. He defended the independence of central banks, saying:

“Every advanced economy, democracy in the world has come around to this common practice. It’s just an institutional arrangement that has served the people well, and that is to have a separation between, to not have directly elected official control over the setting of monetary policy.”

President Donald Trump insists that elected leaders should have more say in interest rate decisions, and he threatened to end Chair Powell’s term before this May, Cryptopolitan reported.

“The reason is that monetary policy can be used, you know, through an election cycle to affect the economy in a way that will be politically worthwhile. If you lose that, it’s going to be hard to retain it, and we haven’t lost it. I don’t believe we will … it’s enabled central banks generally not to be perfect, but to serve the public well,” Powell told reporters on Wednesday.

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