Bitcoin fell below $60,000 on Friday for the first time since 2024, a sharp reversal after the post‑election surge; it had recently changed hands at about $60,619. The decline left the coin roughly 12.6% under its November 5, 2024 closing price of about $69,355 and nearly 52% below its 2025 peak, when Bitcoin reached $126,080.
The scale of the unwind is measurable: Bitcoin topped out above $121,000 in 2025 before a $19 billion, record‑breaking liquidation spree that began in October sent the price down to $106,000, and then lower still toward $88,000 by year‑end. Exchange‑traded funds that had helped absorb demand also turned into a source of selling—ETF assets rose from roughly $37 billion in January 2025 to more than $62 billion at their 2025 peak, and then recorded more than $1.5 billion in net outflows in January 2026, with more than $4 billion leaving in less than a month.
Those figures matter for cryptocurrency trading desks and long‑term holders because they show how quickly flows can reverse. The concentrated liquidation in October stripped a large portion of the market’s liquidity just months after Bitcoin soared, and the subsequent ETF outflows removed another cushion for prices. The result: the gains tied to Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection — the so‑called ‘Trump Trade’ that pushed Bitcoin above $75,000 on November 6, 2024 and helped drive the run toward a 2025 high — have been largely erased.
Corporate treasury activity both amplified and obscured the picture. Trump Media and Technology Group added $2 billion in Bitcoin and related securities in July 2025, a high‑profile corporate accumulation that underpinned bullish narratives. At the same time, smaller but visible sales have begun to appear: at the end of May 2026, Michael Saylor parted with 32 BTC from his firm’s treasury for about $2.5 million, a move that undercuts the idea of uninterrupted corporate buying as an automatic floor under the market.
Market participants point to the interaction of several mechanical forces: heavy liquidations pushed prices down, those losses prompted ETF redemptions and institutional outflows, and the reduced liquidity amplified price moves when selling hit. The October liquidation — and the subsequent slide from above $121,000 to $106,000 — is a clear example of how a concentrated forced‑sell event can overcome months of inflows and corporate purchases.
For traders watching intraday order books, the lesson is straightforward: large, rapid outflows can flip ETF demand from support into supply. The ETFs that helped lift assets under management from $37 billion to more than $62 billion in 2025 also showed their limits when more than $4 billion flowed out in under a month, and when January 2026 logged more than $1.5 billion in net redemptions.
The backdrop of elevated macroeconomic uncertainty and the Iran War, which increased geopolitical risk from February onward, has only sharpened the market’s sensitivity to flows. Those wider risks have made buyers less willing to absorb large sell orders, increasing the chance that bouts of forced selling will ripple through prices in a market that is now nearly 52% below its all‑time mark.
The central unanswered question for cryptocurrency trading is blunt: will the recent ETF outflows and pockets of corporate selling continue to generate enough supply to drive Bitcoin substantially lower? The next measurable answers will arrive in the coming flow reports and price action—if outflows persist, forced liquidations could reassert themselves and push prices well beneath the levels Bitcoin traded at this week.
