Bitcoin printed one of the largest ever daily candles to the downside on Thursday, sliding more than 15%, roughly $10,800, in a move that rippled through derivatives, spot venues, and the US Bitcoin ETF complex.<\/p>\n
The scale of the drop is what made it stand out. Not just the percentage drawdown, but the mix of stress signals hitting at once: implied volatility spiking, volumes exploding, and momentum gauges collapsing into levels typically associated with forced selling rather than discretionary risk reduction.<\/p>\n
Real Vision\u2019s Jamie Coutts framed<\/a> the session as a \u201ccapitulation watch,\u201d pointing to a cluster of metrics rarely seen together. He highlighted Bitcoin implied volatility via BVIV at 88.55, \u201cclosing in on the FTX-collapse peak of 105,\u201d and noted Coinbase logged its eighth-largest trading day ever by USD value, with $3.34 billion changing hands\u2014roughly 54,000 BTC at ~$62,000.<\/p>\n Coutts also underscored how extreme the momentum reset looked on daily charts, citing a daily RSI of 15.64, \u201cat or below March 2020 COVID crash lows.\u201d He added: \u201cMargin calls are firing. Forced liquidations are likely still working through the system. This has the signature of a capitulation event, but capitulation can be a process, not a single candle (unless we get a massive wick!). These conditions can persist for weeks or even months before a durable low forms.\u201d<\/p>\n Macro trader Alex Kr\u00fcger stopped short of a price target for the lows, but argued the market was registering the kind of positioning and pricing distortions that tend to cluster around turning points in time.<\/p>\n \u201cFriends I really do not know where the bitcoin bottom is but I can recognize extreme conditions that you only see close to bottoms in time, such as extreme negative funding, options skew at levels only seen once before since 2022 (FTX day<\/a>), and volumes & liquidations at extraordinary levels,\u201d he wrote. \u201cYou also have some monster shorts that opened between 64k and 60k, material for a short squeeze sending price to 68k, and if we see so then everyone will start talking about the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n Kr\u00fcger\u2019s caveat was just as direct: \u201cIn the meantime of course equities need to hold. And having a bottom in does not mean that you will see a major trend from here.\u201d<\/p>\n Galaxy\u2019s Alex Thorn described the tape as historically stretched on RSI measures, saying bitcoin was \u201cthe most oversold today than any day since 3AC blew up in June 2022 (30d RSI),\u201d and calling it \u201cbasically in the top 3 oversold events ever,\u201d alongside November 2018 and June 2022.<\/p>\n The US spot Bitcoin ETF market didn\u2019t cushion the move, it amplified the day\u2019s activity. Bloomberg Intelligence\u2019s Eric Balchunas said BlackRock\u2019s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) \u201cjust crushed its daily volume record with $10b worth of shares traded\u201d as the fund\u2019s price fell 13%, its second-worst daily drop since launch.<\/p>\n Head of Research for Anchorage Digital David Lawant added that IBIT<\/a> alone trading above $10 billion was the highest since launch, beating prior records by 69% in shares and 27% in USD volume.<\/p>\n Positioning data hinted at a complex, two-sided ETF ecosystem. Head of Research at K33 Research Vetle Lunde noted net equivalent short exposure in short BTC ETFs was nearing the November 2022 peak at 7,745 BTC, while 2x leveraged long BTC ETFs\u2014products that didn\u2019t exist then\u2014currently hold 39,590 BTC, \u201cat levels not seen since Mar 24.\u201d<\/p>\n