Bitcoin falls to $73,500 as liquidations top $1 billion

Bitcoin fell from $75,690 to $73,477 in 15 minutes on Sunday, Nov. 8, its lowest level since August, Bitcoin.com reported. CoinDesk says BTC later bounced back above $75,000, while more than $1 billion in leveraged positions was liquidated over 24 hours.

Details

According to CoinDesk, $913 million of the $1 billion came from long positions. Ether took a bigger hit than bitcoin: $448 million in liquidations versus $272 million for BTC, and the largest single forced order was a $48 million ETH position. ETH briefly slipped below $2,100 before recovering to $2,144.

Our own feed of Binance liquidations (a lower bound, since the exchange reports at most one liquidation per second) shows about $91.9 million in longs and $4.8 million in shorts for Nov. 8 (UTC), with a Binance daily low of $73,510. Live figures are in the daily brief.

Outlets tie the move to two weekend developments. One is the scandal around Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: the company said its board launched an independent investigation but has "no reason to believe" national security or company secrets were compromised (as relayed by CoinDesk). The other is U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying talks with Iran had "failed to make progress." Thin weekend liquidity amplified the swing; CoinDesk noted crypto was the only major market open.

What it means for the market

The drop came after a weak week. Per Bitcoin.com, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs shed $412 million on Friday and $1.28 billion over the week, and the Fear & Greed Index read 29. On Nov. 6, Decrypt had already reported $1.05 billion in liquidations over 24 hours amid a selloff in AI stocks, so Sunday's flush extends that pressure.

Per CoinDesk, tokenized Nvidia stock traded at a discount to Friday's close, a sign that traders are bracing for how traditional markets react on Monday. This is not investment advice.