Crypto Just Had Its Worst Week in Years — Is it a Buying Opportunity?

TLDR

• Bitcoin fell 17.3% and ether dropped 22% this week — the biggest weekly losses since the FTX collapse in November 2022
• The total crypto market lost around $390 billion in value, pushing market cap just above $2 trillion
• Nearly $7 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated, with $5.7 billion being bullish long bets
• Strategy sold bitcoin for the first time in nearly four years, rattling investor confidence, while ETF outflows continued
• Crowd pessimism hit multi-month highs, but institutional activity — including $20 billion in tokenized real-world assets — kept building

Crypto markets had one of their worst weeks in years. Bitcoin dropped 17.3% and ether fell 22%, their steepest weekly declines since the FTX collapse in November 2022.

The total crypto market lost roughly $390 billion in value. That left the overall market cap just above $2 trillion, down sharply from a peak of nearly $4.2 trillion in October, according to TradingView data.

Leveraged traders took heavy losses. About $7 billion in positions were liquidated across crypto markets during the week, according to CoinGlass. Most of those — around $5.7 billion — were long positions, meaning traders who were betting prices would rise.

What Triggered the Selloff

Several factors hit at the same time. Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, disclosed it had sold 32 BTC worth roughly $2.5 million. It was the company’s first bitcoin sale in nearly four years.

The amount was small, but the move unsettled investors who had treated Strategy as a reliable source of demand. Some also began questioning whether the company might need to sell more bitcoin to cover costs tied to its preferred equity obligations.

Bitcoin ETFs also saw continued outflows. K33 Research head Vetle Lunde said some of those outflows reflected capital moving away from crypto and into artificial intelligence investments.

With AI-related stocks at record highs and investors watching for potential IPOs from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX, the cost of holding bitcoin became harder to justify for some.

Zcash fell more than 40% after researchers used an AI model to find a critical vulnerability in its privacy system.

Jobs Report Added to the Pressure

Friday’s stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs report made things worse. Markets that had expected interest rate cuts are now pricing in the possibility the Federal Reserve could hike rates instead.

U.S. Treasury yields surged. The Nasdaq 100 had its worst day since the tariff-driven selloff in April 2025.

By Saturday, prices had stabilized slightly, but both bitcoin and ether remained near their lows — BTC just above $60,000 and ETH around $1,550.

Crowd Sentiment vs. Institutional Activity

Crypto social sentiment hit its most pessimistic level since mid-February, according to data from Santiment. Keywords like “dead,” “finished,” and “over” appeared more alongside bitcoin and crypto discussions than at any point in months.

Historically, that kind of widespread despair has appeared near market bottoms. A similar spike in February preceded a market rebound.

But away from social media noise, institutional activity continued. Tokenized real-world assets crossed $20 billion in total on-chain value the same week. JPMorgan settled live Treasury trades on-chain, and exchange Bullish completed a $4.2 billion acquisition.

Whether this week’s losses mark a bottom or just another step in a broader downturn remains unclear. Rate-hike fears, AI competition, and macro uncertainty are still in play.

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