Bitcoin Selloff: Worst Crypto Week Since July 2024

The Bitcoin selloff this week earns its place in the record books as the worst crypto stretch since July 2024. BTC sheds more than 14% and broke $60,000 on Friday for the first time since October 2024. Ether collapses by more than 17%, while Solana, XRP and Dogecoin all post double digit losses. The crypto market absorbed $4.6 billion in cumulative liquidations across five sessions, set against institutional desertion and a hostile macro backdrop.

Key Takeaways

• Worst crypto week since July 2024: BTC down 14%, ETH down 17%, SOL and XRP between 20% and 23% lower
• $4.6 billion in cumulative liquidations across five sessions, including $1.6 billion on Friday alone
• Spot Bitcoin ETFs logged 13 straight sessions of net outflows, draining $4.4 billion since mid May

Five Sessions That Reset the Market

The Bitcoin selloff played out in five acts, each one breaking a major technical level. Monday opened with BTC losing $70,000 after Strategy disclosed its first sale since 2022. Wednesday brought the slide to $65,708 in a visible capitulation of long positions. Friday saw the psychological $60,000 floor crack, triggering $1.6 billion in liquidations within 24 hours.

Ether paid an even steeper price in percentage terms. At $1,575 on Saturday morning, the token shows a 17% weekly drop and a 21.6% slide over the rolling seven days. Solana plunges 23.7% to $63, its lowest level since last autumn. XRP, Dogecoin and BNB all sit between 13% and 20% lower on the week.

The cumulative liquidation tally reaches $4.6 billion across the sequence. Tuesday and Wednesday had already wiped out $3 billion in leveraged positions. BTC futures open interest contracted 8.5% to $111.4 billion, a signal of structural unwinding from high leverage traders.

The reference to July 2024 carries weight. That period marked the bottom of the post halving bear flush, before the rebound powered by spot ETH ETF approval and the U.S. election. Seven months later, the market erases every gain accumulated since Thanksgiving, and some analysts are starting to model a $50,000 retest before year end.

Institutional Desertion Settles In

The hidden face of this black week is the continuous capital outflow from institutional vehicles. Spot Bitcoin ETFs chained 13 consecutive sessions of net redemptions, draining $4.4 billion since mid May. Assets under management dropped from $104.29 billion to $80.40 billion, a sharp pullback for products that had absorbed more than $40 billion in a single year.

The bleed did not stay confined to BTC. Ether, Solana and XRP ETFs, which had held firm since early May, joined the redemption wave in recent sessions. Only HYPE kept attracting inflows, echoing a dynamic observed earlier this year and documented in our analysis of the crypto market meltdown at $65,708.

Triggers piled up. The Strategy sale of 32 BTC at end of May, covered in our piece on Strategy selling Bitcoin below 70,000, broke a dogma held since 2022. Transfers from a large Mt. Gox wallet added a layer of concern about future selling pressure.

K33 Research analysts sum up the dynamic in one sentence. The opportunity cost of holding BTC is judged too high while AI prints fresh records every week. The capital that financed altcoins now trades Nvidia and the upcoming SpaceX and Anthropic IPOs, two names regularly cited as magnets for speculative liquidity.

Also on Cryptonomic:

• Bitcoin 60,000 Floor Cracks After Explosive Jobs Report
• Bitcoin 500,000 Target Set by Atlas Capital and Dr. Doom
• Arthur Hayes Dumps $18M HYPE Stack and Hyperliquid Drops

The Stage Changes for the Second Half

Beyond the price shock, the week marks a turning point for the crypto narrative heading into H2. The U.S. jobs report published Friday (172,000 new positions against 85,000 expected) rewrote the Fed reaction function. Swaps now fully price a rate hike by year end, while markets had been counting on cuts under new chair Kevin Warsh.

That reversal is explosive for long duration assets like BTC. The liquidity premium that justified valuations since last autumn evaporates. Prediction markets now imply a 66% probability of a sub $55,000 print before year end, and a coin flip chance of a return toward $50,000.

Thursday’s Zcash incident added a layer of idiosyncratic stress. The disclosure of a critical flaw that sat undetected for four years in the Orchard pool wiped 50% off the token’s value and triggered $116 million in ZEC liquidations. The immediate contagion into Monero and Dash reminded the market of the privacy segment’s fragility, already under regulatory pressure.

Saturday’s technical bounce to $61,000 signals no real reversal. Stabilizing ETF flows, decelerating derivatives liquidations and a softening Fed signal are the three boxes that must be ticked before talk of a real floor makes sense. Until then, the Bitcoin selloff stays the default read.

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