Bitcoin broke below $69,000 on Thursday, extending a slide that has erased roughly $550 billion from the total cryptocurrency market since early October, as the forces dragging prices lower shifted from leveraged derivatives to a broader shortage of buyers.

The largest digital token had already touched a three-month low of $71,317 on Wednesday, while Ether fell under $2,000 to about $1,983, according to market data. Total crypto market capitalization dropped from $2.94 trillion in early October to $2.39 trillion. The decline accelerated overnight into Thursday, with bitcoin trading below the $69,000 line and the liquidation tally reaching about $1.41 billion in 24 hours.

Derivatives amplified the move. Roughly 172,900 positions were closed out, and long bets accounted for $1.26 billion, or 89% of the total. Bitcoin represented $742 million of the forced closures, with 96% of those contracts bullish. Ether contributed about $251 million, of which 90.4% were longs. More than $745 million was liquidated in a single four-hour stretch.

Forced selling works as a feedback loop: when margin runs short, platforms automatically close positions, and each closure adds supply that pushes other leveraged traders toward their own thresholds.

What separates this episode from an ordinary deleveraging is the absence of spot demand to absorb the selling. U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds logged five straight sessions of net withdrawals through Nov. 11 totaling about $1.44 billion, including $299.9 million in the most recent session, of which $269.7 million came from BlackRock's IBIT. Ethereum products were headed for a seventh negative week, with more than $2.1 billion pulled over the period.

The cash sitting on the sidelines is thinning too. Supply of major dollar-backed stablecoins shrank by $14.2 billion over 30 days through Nov. 9, the fastest contraction since June 2022, according to Glassnode. Apparent bitcoin demand fell by 284,000 BTC over a comparable stretch.

"The market is running on empty," Glassnode said, describing capital exiting through three channels at once: stablecoin withdrawals, ETF redemptions and reduced buying from U.S.-based participants.

On-chain positioning shows how stretched the market has become. The average cost basis for short-term holders sits near $75,600, leaving roughly 65% of that supply underwater. CryptoQuant data showed Binance's bitcoin futures open interest falling from about $10.6 billion to $8.8 billion in roughly a month, a 17% contraction that suggests some excess positioning has been worked off. Even so, taker flow in futures remains sell-skewed.

Miner behavior has added a supply-side wrinkle. Exchange deposits from mining addresses spiked to 2,077 BTC on Nov. 10, about 16 times the 30-day average of roughly 127 BTC, though about 97% of that came from a single pool, Antpool. Mining economics have tightened as difficulty rose about 12% between Oct. 4 and Oct. 30 while bitcoin's price fell about 15% over the same span. Deposits to exchanges do not by themselves constitute sales.

Not every cohort is retreating. Glassnode's Accumulation Trend Score, a seven-day measure running from 0 to 1, put wallets holding between 100 and 10,000 BTC above 0.5 for the week to Nov. 9, marking them as net accumulators. The firm called it "early dip buying from a narrow group." Wallets above 10,000 BTC and those below 1 BTC were still reducing balances, and the same mid-sized bands briefly turned buyers in late September before reversing.

Attention now centers on $68,000, a level where liquidation maps show clustered positions. Glassnode's order-book analysis found bid support concentrated between $68,000 and $72,500, with buy orders exceeding sell orders in every hour within 5% of spot since Nov. 5. Sell orders cluster near $83,600, a potential ceiling on any rebound.

A liquidation map, however, only marks where contracts could be closed; it does not measure the actual buy orders available to defend a price. A separate CVDD-derived level near $52,700 has been cited because prior cycle lows in 2015, 2018, 2020 and 2022 formed close to that measure, though the indicator moves with on-chain activity and is not a forecast.

The break below the 200-day moving average around $73,200 has left technicians focused on whether the $68,000 zone holds. Sustained stabilization is likely to require three reversals in tandem: an end to ETF outflows, a resumption in stablecoin supply growth and net spot buying. Until those flows improve, closing out leveraged longs may leave a less indebted market, but one still short of buyers.

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