Bitcoin briefly dropped below $70,000 on Thursday amid a broader sell-off of risk assets.
The move, which happened around 6:27 a.m. ET, was the first time bitcoin fell below $70,000 since November 2024. Bitcoin bounced off that low and was trading at around 70,453.68 at 6:40 a.m. ET, according to CoinMetrics data.
Some market watchers have suggested $70,000 is a key level to watch and a break below that could trigger more falls for bitcoin.
The price of bitcoin over the last year.
The drop follows a broad sell-off in tech stocks in the U.S. on Wednesday which filtered through to cryptocurrencies.
Meanwhile, precious metals continue to be volatile with silver plunging again on Thursday and gold under pressure.
Liquidations — when traders’ positions are automatically sold as bitcoin hits a certain price — continue to weigh on markets. This week, more than $2 billion long and short positions in cryptocurrencies have been liquidated this week as of Thursday, according to data from Coinglass.
Bitcoin has been on a steady decline since it hit an all-time high above $126,000 in October. It now sits around 40% off that record high with other cryptocurrencies, including ether and XRP, off by much more.
“[The] straight line bull run that a lot of people expected hasn’t really materialized yet. Bitcoin isn’t trading on hype anymore, the story has lost a bit of that plot, it is trading on pure liquidity and capital flows,” Maja Vujinovic, CEO of digital assets at FG Nexus, told CNBC’s “Worldwide Exchange.”
While many in the crypto market have credited large institutional investors with supporting bitcoin’s price, it is those same participants who appear to now be selling.
“Institutional demand has reversed materially,” CryptoQuant said in a report on Wednesday.
U.S. exchange-traded funds which purchased 46,000 bitcoin at this time last year, are net sellers in 2026, CryptoQuant said.
The report also notes another key figure. “Bitcoin has broken below its 365-day moving average for the first time since March 2022 and has declined 23% in the 83 days since the breakdown—worse than the early 2022 bear phase,” CryptoQuant analysts said. A moving average is a technical trading term that refers to the average closing price of an asset over a specified time.
This suggests “potential downside toward the $70K–$60K range,” CryptoQuant said.
