Bitcoin fell through the $90,000 level overnight, weakened by sell pressure in equities as the crypto market awaits its next catalyst.

The price of bitcoin fell 6% to $88,519, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it fell as low as $87,736.

The decline puts the blue chip coin almost 20% off its all-time high reached on President Donald Trump’s inauguration day.

“Equities have faced a few difficult sessions over the last week, with top-performing stocks down many times the index, as markets grapple with increased uncertainty under the new administration,” said Steven Lubka, head of private clients and family offices at Swan Bitcoin. “This pressure has spilled over into bitcoin and crypto markets.”

The S&P 500 on Monday posted a three-day losing streak as it failed to recover from last week’s sell-off, driven by concern over a slowing economy and sticky inflation.

“Ultimately, the lack of visible short-term catalysts and pressure from equities creates an environment for profit-taking and pressure from shorts,” Lubka added.

Bitcoin kicked off the year in rally mode, fueled by optimism about the positive changes the new Trump administration was expected to make for the crypto industry. However, since the President issued his widely anticipated executive order on crypto at the end of January – the contents of which were well received by the industry despite its tamer than hoped for language on a strategic bitcoin reserve – the market has had little to look forward to.

While optimism about the long-term positive impact Trump’s policies could have for crypto remains high, its movements have been and may continue to be dictated by macroeconomic trends.

“From November through January, the market was very enthusiastic about pricing in a crypto-friendly U.S. administration,” said Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group. “Now it’s a question of waiting for that next catalyst. We know that all of this is in place, and the market is in a bit of a sell-the-fact consolidation sell as it kind of waits.”

The $90,000 level marks the bottom of the narrow range bitcoin has been trading in since the end of November. Analysts have warned that if bitcoin were to meaningfully break below the level, it could see a deeper pullback toward $80,000.

“There is room for bitcoin still to go back down towards the $70,000 to $75,000 area without doing anything to compromise the outlook,” Kruger said, “and we suspect that there will be plenty of demand as we head down towards those levels.”

Lubka said he believes bitcoin will finish digesting this move and resume its long-term move higher by mid-March.

Other cryptocurrencies fared worse on Monday. Ether and Solana’s sol token each tumbled 9%. The broader market of cryptocurrencies, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, lost more than 8%.

Chegg on Monday filed suit in federal district court against Google, claiming that artificial intelligence summaries of search results have hurt the online education company’s traffic and revenue.

The legal move come nearly two years after former CEO Dan Rosensweig said students engaging with OpenAI’s ChatGPT assistant were cutting into Chegg’s new customer growth.

Chegg is worth less than $200 million, and in after-hours trading Monday, the stock was trading just above $1 per share. Chegg has engaged Goldman Sachs and will look at strategic options, including getting acquired and going private, President and CEO Nathan Schultz told analysts on a Monday earnings call.

Chegg reported a $6.1 million net loss on $143.5 million in fourth-quarter revenue, a 24% decline year over year, according to a statement. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $142.1 million in revenue. Management called for first-quarter revenue between $114 million and $116 million, but analysts had been targeting $138.1 million. The stock was down 23% in extended trading.

Google forces companies like Chegg to “supply our proprietary content in order to be included in Google’s search function,” said Schultz, adding that the search company uses its monopoly power, “reaping the financial benefits of Chegg’s content without having to spend a dime.”

Despite the suit, Chegg has its own AI strategy. It has drawn on Meta’s open-source Llama, as well as models from privately held Anthropic and Mistral, Schultz said. Chegg has also partnered with OpenAI, which the education company views as a competitor, alongside Google. The company reported that 3.6 million students had subscriptions in the fourth quarter, down 21%. Subscriptions include access to AI-powered learning assistance. Chegg also rents and sells textbooks.

AI Overviews, as Google’s artificial intelligence summaries are called, are available in the company’s search engine in over 100 countries, with more than 1 billion users, the company said in October. They show up above links to other pages in search results.

A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the company will defend itself against Chegg’s suit.

“Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites,” the Google spokesperson said.

Chegg claimed that Google drew on Chegg’s collection of 135 million questions and answers on a variety of subjects in its model training data sets.

After training its models, Google can generate content that competes with information that publishers have on offer in search results, Chegg argued in its complaint. The online learning company included a screenshot of a Google AI Overview that borrows details from Chegg’s website but does not attribute the information. However, the relevant Chegg page does show up lower down in search results.

Chegg cited a federal judge’s ruling last August that Google holds a monopoly in the search market. The decision came after the Department of Justice in 2020 filed its landmark case, alleging that Google controlled the general search market by creating strong barriers to entry and a feedback loop that sustained its dominance.

WATCH: Google unrolls AI Overviews in six more countries