Bitcoin and Ethereum sink to 3-month lows as $727M in leveraged bets vanish

Bitcoin and Ethereum slid to three-month lows Thursday. Bitcoin dropped to $71,317, its weakest level since August, while Ethereum briefly broke below $2,000 to touch $1,983. The slump has stripped roughly $550 billion from the crypto market's value since October, pulling total valuation from about $2.94 trillion down to $2.39 trillion.

Leveraged traders took the hit. CoinGlass counted 125,731 traders liquidated over 24 hours, with closed positions totaling about $727 million. Bitcoin accounted for $293.8 million of that, 91.1% of it from bullish bets, and Ethereum added $120.2 million, 87.7% from longs. Together the two coins made up roughly $414 million, or 57% of the market-wide damage.

The pain landed fast. Nearly $489 million in leveraged positions were closed inside a four-hour window, with longs bleeding about $446 million against just $44 million in shorts. The single biggest casualty was a $31 million Bitcoin position on decentralized derivatives exchange Hyperliquid.

Sentiment cracked alongside prices. CryptoQuant's Analyst Consensus Index fell from -1.0 to -1.8 standard deviations over seven days. Institutional money is retreating too: SoSoValue data shows US spot Bitcoin ETFs logged about $2 billion in net outflows across three weeks, while Ethereum products are headed for a seventh straight week of withdrawals totaling more than $2.1 billion. Stablecoin supply shrank by $14.2 billion in 30 days, and Bitcoin's apparent demand fell by 284,000 BTC.

The technical picture isn't helping. Bitcoin broke below its 200-day moving average near $73,200, and CoinGlass's liquidation heatmap flags roughly $68,000 as the next support zone. Joao Wedson, chief executive of blockchain analytics firm Alphractal, points to Bitcoin's Cumulative Value Days Destroyed indicator, which sits near $52,700. At a price of $72,500, Bitcoin traded about 37.7% above that level, and a full retest would mean a decline of roughly 27% from there. Wedson noted past cycles where Bitcoin touched or dipped under the metric — December 2018's bottom near $3,122 against a $3,060 reading, and November 2022's low around $15,479 versus $15,900, plus similar patterns in January 2015 and March 2020.

CVDD isn't a fixed line, though — it moves with on-chain activity as older coins change wallets, so its threshold can rise without Bitcoin falling that far. That leaves two tests: whether buyers hold the $68,000 region CoinGlass identifies, and whether Bitcoin can climb back above its 200-day average.