Bitcoin nears February lows amid $1.4 billion exiting its ETFs
“This week has been painful in crypto. There is really no other way of putting it.”
Bitcoin hit $61,500 before rebounding to $64,000 Thursday morning, and is down 3.8% over the past 24 hours. The last time it was in this range was the first week of February.
At its lowest level, bitcoin’s market cap had lost $400 billion over the past 25 days, per Coin Bureau, which, to put it in perspective, is more than the entire market cap of Netflix, Bank of America, or Chevron.
“This week has been painful in crypto. There is really no other way of putting it,” Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, wrote in a June 4 note.
Crypto liquidations have reached $1.8 billion in the past 24 hours, CoinGlass data shows. Bitcoin saw $836 million in liquidations, with the bulk, $669 million, in long positions.
Bitcoin ETFs are on their 13th consecutive day of outflows, the longest losing streak on record, with $1.4 billion exiting this week so far. If this continues, it would mark the fourth consecutive billion-dollar weekly outflow, per SoSoValue.
The key question is not just whether bitcoin holds $63,000 but whether ETF flows stabilize, exchange reserves keep falling, and whale accumulation picks up, Lacie Zhang, a research analyst at Bitget Wallet, told Sherwood News.
“A retest of $55K–$57K remains possible if outflows persist, but crypto may already be closer to clearing this episode than equity markets are,” Zhang said.
This week has been brutal for Strategy cofounder Michael Saylor, who is being blamed on X for all of bitcoin’s woes, with some suggesting he should have sold $1 billion to $2 billion “to rip the band aid off,” instead of limiting Strategy’s sale to just 32 bitcoin.
Earlier Thursday, the treasury company marked an unwanted milestone, hitting a $10 billion unrealized loss, according to DropsTab, which The Kobeisi Letter said was “the biggest in history.”
STRC, the company’s perpetual preferred equity instrument, remains in hot water and is now trading at $95, below its $100 par value.
Saylor addressed the current market on X, blaming the AI trade and ETF outflows for bitcoin’s pain.
“This is a capital rotation, not a Bitcoin impairment. Volatility creates opportunity,” Saylor posted.
So, where to next?
Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at Nansen, told Sherwood that downward pressure will persist as long as geopolitical escalation continues to print.
“What we need to see before the setup changes is price reacting less aggressively to negative catalysts, a signal that sell pressure is exhausting, and willingness to hold longs is returning,” Søndergaard said.
Nic Puckrin, cofounder of the Coin Bureau, told Sherwood that bitcoin has melted through all the support levels: $73,000, $70,000, and the 200-week exponential moving average.
Now, the key level to hold is $61,200, he said, the simple moving average — a level bitcoin hasn’t fallen below all cycle.
If this resistance level doesn’t hold, Puckrin said the next support level is the realized price around $53,000, the average price at which all bitcoin was last transacted, and $50,000, the round psychological barrier that traders will be watching closely.
“Around these levels, we would likely see buyers stepping in again. While this would be a major correction, it would still be well in line with previous bear markets,” Puckrin said.
Finally, Standard Chartered’s Kendrick frames a rebound around three factors: what Strategy will disclose next week, ETF holdings being “more structurally strong than I had feared in February,” and liquidations being mostly done.
If Strategy operates similarly to how it did the last time it sold bitcoin, in 2022 (buying back more bitcoin than it sold shortly after), Kendrick said he would see this as a “tentative sign the low has been printed,” adding that the timing of the sale is “a shame.”
He said there is a risk of further liquidation below $60,000, “but given how badly BTC has traded vs. equities since this year the degree of longs to liquidate is less now.”
“There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in the above so accumulation is a better strategy than trying to outright declare the low has been printed. But I think when we look back at the end of 2026 with bitcoin at $100K we will say this was the buying zone we all wanted,” Kendrick said.
