Bitcoin tumbled to its weakest level in 12 weeks on Friday, breaking below the $70,000 mark as a resurgent dollar and a hawkish repricing of Federal Reserve policy drained appetite for risk assets and triggered a fresh wave of forced selling across crypto derivatives.
The largest cryptocurrency fell as low as $67,770, a level last seen on Aug. 19, before trading near $68,760 by midday in New York, down about 4% over 24 hours. Ether slid to roughly $1,900, its lowest since Aug. 18. The broader CoinDesk 20 Index shed about 2%.
Roughly $1.64 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated over the 24-hour window, according to data from CoinGlass, with long bets accounting for 88.7% of the damage. Bitcoin futures alone accounted for $916 million of the total, 95.2% of it longs, while ether positions contributed $289 million. The largest single liquidation was a $31.1 million long on Hyperliquid at $72,250.
Futures activity pointed to traders rushing for the exits rather than adding exposure. Trading volume jumped 58.3% to $269.1 billion while open interest fell 4.6% to $120.2 billion, a combination that signals positions were closed and capital left the market. Market orders also tilted toward selling, with 51.9% of taker volume on the sell side.
The move higher in the U.S. currency did much of the damage. The Dollar Index climbed above 103, its strongest reading since April 2025, after this week's hotter-than-expected inflation data prompted traders to price in an 88% probability of a 25-basis-point rate increase at the Fed's Dec. 8-9 meeting, with a 12% chance of a half-point move, according to the CME FedWatch tool. Higher rates tend to weigh on assets such as crypto that offer no yield.
Crypto also took a cue from equities after Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday, sending shares of the AI chip maker, the world's second-most valuable company, down 4%. Bitcoin has tended to trade in close step with technology stocks.
Exchange-traded funds have amplified the pressure. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded net withdrawals of $47.7 million on Thursday, a sixth consecutive day of outflows that has drained about $1.44 billion, according to Farside Investors. Since the start of November, those funds have lost roughly $1.88 billion.
Sentiment gauges reflected the gloom. The Fear and Greed Index sat at 19 to 20, a reading that denotes extreme fear and the weakest since early July, depending on the tracker.
Note: Prices as of midday Friday in New York; changes measured over 24 hours.
Derivatives positioning suggests many traders now expect further losses. Funding rates on perpetual futures have turned negative across most major coins, including bitcoin, ether, XRP, Solana and Tron's TRX, meaning short sellers are paying longs to hold bearish positions -- the deepest negative funding in about three months. In options, the one-week 25-delta skew on bitcoin jumped to around 14%, indicating downside protection now costs more than equivalent upside bets. The most heavily traded ether option was the $1,800 put expiring Nov. 20, about 7.5% below the current price.
Negative funding cuts both ways. If prices rebound, shorts are forced to buy back, and a squeeze can accelerate a rally just as quickly as liquidations deepened the slump.
Attention is now fixed on the weekend, when part of the market's buyer base disappears. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs trade only during New York Stock Exchange hours and will not reopen until Monday at 9:30 a.m. ET, while CME bitcoin futures pause from Friday at 5 p.m. ET until Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. Bitcoin itself trades around the clock, but with thinner order books, large sell orders move the price further and stop-losses and liquidations can cascade faster.
Chart watchers are focused on the weekly close at 7 p.m. ET Sunday. Bitcoin is only about 1.5% above its 200-week moving average of $67,752, a level briefly breached by Friday's low. A weekly close below that threshold would be a signal many technical traders track closely. The 200-day average sits at $73,081, about 6.3% above the current price, and would need to be reclaimed to shift the picture.
Below the market, recent reference points include $64,111, the Aug. 19 low; $60,074, the Feb. 6 low; and $57,748, this year's low set on July 1. Bitcoin last traded below $60,000 on July 2. The all-time high of $126,198 was reached on Oct. 6, 2025, leaving the token down about 45.5% from that peak.
Elsewhere, Solana slipped below $80 even after the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., the Wall Street clearing house, added it to its tokenization plans targeting a 2027 rollout. Aave's lending market drew scrutiny after Nasdaq-listed BTCS disclosed it sold ether at a loss to protect a roughly $64 million loan from liquidation, which by one calculation would come under threat near $1,717 per ether. The CoinDesk DeFi Select Index fell 3.5% since midnight UTC, the steepest drop among sector gauges.
The selloff also landed on a date that has historically been kind to crypto bulls. Friday the 13th has produced a higher daily close for bitcoin on 19 of the 22 such dates since June 2014, with an average gain of 2.2%, according to an analysis of CoinMarketCap closing prices. The three prior declines never exceeded 3.1%. Friday's drop of roughly 3.6% from Thursday's close of $71,343 would rank as the weakest such session on record if it holds through the daily close.
The most famous Friday the 13th in crypto history was not a losing day at all. On March 13, 2020, a day after the Covid crash, bitcoin plunged 17.4% intraday to $4,107 before closing 11.9% higher at $5,564.
October producer prices data, due later Friday, will offer the next read on the inflation path that has driven the Fed repricing. Economists expect a 0.4% monthly increase.
