Bitcoin’s $BTC$69,290.10 price sell-off gathered pace early Friday as the U.S. dollar hit its highest level since April 2025 against a basket of fiat currencies.
The leading cryptocurrency by market value fell to $69,000, hitting the lowest level since Aug. 19, according to CoinDesk data. Prices have dropped by 17% in this quarter, reversing a major chunk of the rally seen in the preceding three months.
The broader market suffered. Ether ETH$1,934.03, the second-largest token, dropped below $2,000 for the first time since August. $XRP ($XRP) traded close to the $1 level, while Solana’s SOL traded below $80. Several smaller tokens, such as GT, Stacks, and XMR, were down 7% or more.
The selloff gathered pace as the Dollar Index (DXY), which tracks the greenback’s exchange rate against major fiat currencies, traded above 103, its highest since April 2025. The index has risen by nearly 2% since early October on strengthening odds of Fed rate hikes, a headwind for liquidity-sensitive risk assets.
The odds that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by half a percentage point in December have increased following a hotter-than-expected U.S. consumer price index reading for October released early this week.
Meanwhile, media reports indicated renewed military escalation in the Middle East. Iran’s IRGC said it destroyed a U.S. early-warning radar in Bahrain in response to an air attack on a telecoms tower in Sirik.
The IRGC, in remarks carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, described the strike as a “serious warning” to the “aggressor enemy,” demanding an end to what it called repeated aerial provocations and oil smuggling in the Strait of Hormuz.
Still, WTI oil continued to trade around $88, down slightly from Thursday’s high of $89.15.
Liquidations
Crypto futures bets worth more than $1.3 billion were liquidated by exchanges over 24 hours, according to data source Coinglass. Of these, bitcoin alone accounted for $677 million.
Nearly $500 million in liquidations occurred just as $BTC fell below $70,000, underscoring how crowded the market had become with leveraged positions.
Liquidations occur when an exchange forcibly closes a leveraged position because its losses have depleted the trader’s margin. In this case, $BTC’s drop below $70,000 likely pushed several long positions below their required collateral level, triggering the forced sale by exchanges.
The largest liquidated position was worth more than $31 million. It was a long $BTC position – or bullish bet – on the decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid.
