Sophia Bennett
Crypto Analyst
This week has been brutal for crypto, and Thursday made it worse.
Bitcoin tumbled to around $61,300 at 02:00 UTC before recovering to as high as $64,680, recently trading around $62,500. Ether lost 3% since midnight UTC, trading at around $1,750. Several altcoins saw even deeper declines, with NEAR, ZEC and JUP all losing more than 13%.
The sell‑off wasn't just painful, it was fast, deep, and broad.
$3 Billion in Liquidations Over Two Days
The numbers behind the carnage are staggering.
The downside move triggered a wave of liquidations with $1.7 billion worth of futures positions being forcibly closed in 24 hours, $750 million from bitcoin and $390 million from ether. Roughly $3 billion in leveraged positions have been wiped out over the past two days.
Total open interest declined 8.5% to $111.4 billion, a sign that leveraged positions are being unwound rather than fresh bets being added.
When open interest falls alongside prices, it typically means the market is deleveraging. That's not necessarily the worst outcome, but it leaves crypto with a thinner base of support for any recovery.
Capital Is Leaving for the AI Trade
The deeper story here isn't just about price mechanics. It's about where money is choosing to go.
Investors appear to be deserting crypto to pursue the AI narrative in traditional markets, exacerbating the geopolitical uncertainty and a fundamentally broken market structure that has failed to recover from October's leverage wipeout.
While Bitcoin is falling, AI‑related equities and semiconductor stocks continue to hit record highs. That capital rotation is real, and it's pulling institutional money out of crypto in a visible, sustained way.
The Derivatives Market Is Screaming Bear
Every signal coming from the options and futures markets right now is bearish, and none of them are subtle.
Put skews have strengthened in both bitcoin and ether, signaling that investors are willing to pay a premium for downside protection. The $60,000 strike put on Deribit carries over $1 billion in notional open interest. As spot prices approach that strike, large position adjustments become increasingly likely, which could amplify volatility. The $55,000 put was the most actively traded options contract in the past 24 hours.
Over a billion dollars sitting in $60,000 puts. Traders aren't hedging cautiously, they're actively positioning for further falls.
The 24‑hour cumulative volume delta across the top 20 tokens is negative, meaning traders are selling at market prices rather than limit orders. This active, aggressive bearish participation suggests potential for deeper losses.
Solana Is in Particular Trouble
Among the major altcoins, Solana is flashing the most concerning signals.
Open interest in SOL surged to a record 72.16 million tokens even as prices declined, a combination that typically signals an influx of short positions. The sentiment is understandable given SOL dropped below its February low while BTC, ETH and XRP held above theirs.
Record short positioning building while price falls is a dangerous setup. SOL is showing acute weakness that separates it from its peers right now.
The $60,000 Line That Decides Everything
Much of the altcoin trajectory will depend on bitcoin's ability to hold above $60,000. A break below that could trigger further liquidations, which would weigh more on the illiquid altcoin pairs.
The message from every corner of the derivatives market this week is the same: traders aren't buying this dip, they're betting it goes lower. Until that changes, $60,000 is the only number that matters.