The crypto market was slammed in Monday's global sell-off, with bitcoin (BTC-USD) briefly trading below $50,000 and ethereum (ETH-USD) briefly seeing its biggest one-day drop since 2021.

Matt Hougan, Bitwise Asset Management CIO, explains why bitcoin is so prone to steep declines, saying "It's a speculative asset. It's a liquid asset that can be sold particularly on the weekends. Those things combined to draw the price down substantially." In the long term, Hougan believes bitcoin's fundamentals are still in place and expects a recovery in the "relatively near term."

When it comes to the bitcoin ETFs, many of them took big losses on Monday. Hougan believes that is because they trade on Monday through Friday schedule and not on the weekends, like the underlying asset. As a result, they had to "catch up" on Monday However, he notes that the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) saw net inflows, not outflows in the trading session.

Find out why Hougan argues that bitcoin could hit new highs again later this year.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend.

This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.