Bitcoin tumbled to $77,000 as $2.5 billion in leveraged bets were liquidated, but open blockchain data revealed the panic live — exposing risk, leverage and whale accumulation before traditional markets reacted.
Bitcoin’s latest plunge delivered a brutal weekend stress test — not only for crypto prices but for the open-source infrastructure that powers the market.
The largest digital asset fell below $80,000, touching roughly $77,000, its weakest level since the April 2025 “tariff tantrums”, erasing nearly $800 billion in value from the October peak above $126,000.
The sell-off quickly turned mechanical. About $850 million in long liquidations hit within hours, swelling to roughly $2.5 billion over 24 hours and wiping out nearly 200,000 traders. As one description put it, “forced selling leads to lower prices, which trigger even more liquidations” — a classic “domino effect”.
Geopolitical jitters over a potential U.S.–Iran escalation froze risk appetite. Instead of acting as digital gold, bitcoin became “the world’s ATM”, dumped for liquidity in thin weekend trading.
Contagion spread. Gold fell 9%, silver crashed 26%, while U.S. futures slid, with the Nasdaq down 1% and the S&P 500 off 0.6%.
Structural cracks surfaced. Bitcoin slipped out of the global top 10 assets. Strategy, led by Michael Saylor, briefly traded below its $76,037 average entry. Saylor said he would “buy the dip”, though tighter capital conditions leave fewer institutional buyers.
Yet the open source rails told the story in real time. Blockchain data from Glassnode and Coinglass showed exact liquidation volumes, trader wipeouts, and wallet flows: small holders capitulated, while mega-whales quietly accumulated.
Unlike opaque traditional markets, leverage and stress were publicly visible — turning the crash into a live audit of decentralised finance. As Warren Buffett observed, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
