Bitcoin slips below $70K as $454.7M in BTC liquidations lands on longs

Bitcoin buckled below $70,000 and changed hands near $68,888, after $454.7 million of BTC positions were liquidated — 96% of them longs, according to AMBCrypto. The pain wasn't contained: crypto liquidations topped $856.01 million in 24 hours, with longs accounting for $771.7 million. The total crypto market cap dropped more than 5% over the same stretch, and sentiment flipped to extreme fear. BTC shed 6% of its cap as daily trading volume hit $31.90 billion.

Ethereum bled too. Of $131.95 million in ETH liquidations, 91% were longs. Other assets gave up more than $218 million, with long positions making up 75% of that tally.

Demand is contracting faster. Monthly spot demand sat at -280K BTC, while perpetual futures ran at -82K, for a combined -362K BTC. Institutions are pulling back in kind: Bitcoin ETF outflows hit $300 million on November 11 and $48 million the next day.

Miners added pressure. Miner-to-exchange flows spiked to 2,077 BTC this week — roughly 16 times the 30-day average of 127 BTC. That doesn't confirm selling, since it could be treasury transfers or management. It could also signal squeezed miner margins at these prices.

US appetite went quiet, with the Coinbase Premium Index below -4, down from 0.8 in September — the deepest average since February. There's a catch: the 2024 and 2025 rallies all ran with a premium, and several kicked off from deep discounts like this one. Spot CVD is closer to neutral, though the improvement didn't hold, and Futures taker CVD stayed dominated by sellers.

Analyst Benjamin Cowen isn't expecting a quick rescue. Replying to his own post that a bear market makes fools of both bulls and bears, he reiterated that Q4 could be weak — a pattern he says has held since the midterm US election results, when pro-crypto Republicans lost control of the House.