What happened?
Bitcoin came under combined pressure from several directions at once. According to CryptoSlate, Bitcoin holders realized losses exceeding $2 billion over three days, with selling pressure beginning to dominate spot trading on the Binance exchange. A realized loss means that investors sold coins for a lower price than they bought them for, thereby actually booking the loss (as opposed to a loss only on paper).
On Friday, Bitcoin's price briefly fell below $75,000 according to CryptoSlate, as a sharp sell-off in US technology stocks spilled over into cryptocurrencies as well. Decrypt reports that Bitcoin dropped toward $75,500 after a decline in AI-linked stocks, and that this was the lowest level in 11 weeks.
How large were the liquidations?
According to Decrypt, over $1 billion was liquidated in the crypto derivatives market. Liquidation occurs when an exchange forcibly closes a trader's leveraged position because the price moved against them and they ran out of funds to cover it. A wave of liquidations usually accelerates the price movement further, because forced position closures add additional sell (or buy) orders.
Is money leaving ETFs too?
Yes. According to The Block, US spot crypto ETFs returned to net outflows on Thursday, amounting to over $540 million across the main products. The Block links this to the post-midterm market slide following the US midterm elections. Net outflows mean that more money left the funds during the day than flowed into them.
Overview of the numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Realized losses over three days | over $2B | CryptoSlate |
| Price on Friday (briefly) | below $75,000 | CryptoSlate |
| Derivatives liquidations | over $1B | Decrypt |
| Price low | ~$75,500, 11-week low | Decrypt |
| US spot ETF outflows (Thursday) | over $540M | The Block |
What does DeFi have to do with this?
Against the backdrop of market tension, the Safe project published data on how much value is held by so-called smart accounts. According to The Defiant, $12.4 billion in smart account assets sit in DeFi, net after deducting $2.37 billion in loans. In its quarterly report, Safe states a total value of $57.64 billion, but a breakdown of the DeFi portion is missing from it. A smart account is a wallet controlled by a smart contract, not just by a single private key. This figure in itself is not directly related to Friday's sell-off, but it shows how much capital is still actively deployed in on-chain protocols during a period of market stress.
What is a cause and what is merely a coincidence?
The sources describe several phenomena that occurred in the same period: the sell-off in technology and AI stocks, rising expectations regarding US interest rates, ETF outflows, and increased selling pressure on spot exchanges. CryptoSlate and Decrypt connect Bitcoin's decline with the stock sell-off, while The Block links the ETF outflows with the post-election decline. Whether one of these factors was the decisive trigger, or whether it was a matter of mutual amplification, does not clearly emerge from the available sources. We are therefore describing coincidence and correlation, not proven causation.
The $70,000 threshold from the headline is a level that CryptoSlate mentions as a risk level. charliedesk does not give price targets or recommendations. We report what happened and what the data says.
What to watch for in this type of situation
- Whether net ETF outflows continue in the following days or reverse (source: daily data from ETF issuers).
- Whether selling pressure on spot exchanges such as Binance eases.
- Whether the correlation with technology stocks holds or decouples.
- The volumes of further derivatives liquidations as an indicator of leverage tension.