Bitcoin traded close to $77,000 on Saturday, holding just above its weekly lows after a bruising few days for crypto markets. The largest digital currency was down about 4.3 percent over seven days and now sits roughly 39 percent below the all-time high of $126,080 it reached in October 2025.
Liquidations Deepen the Slide
Much of the damage came from the derivatives market, where traders borrow to amplify their bets. Around $427 million of leveraged crypto positions were forcibly closed over 24 hours, and about 73 percent of them were long positions held by traders betting on higher prices. Roughly 93,000 traders were caught in the unwind, according to market data trackers.
Forced selling of this kind tends to feed on itself: as prices fall, more positions breach their limits and are closed automatically, pushing prices down further. Bitcoin briefly dipped toward $76,300, a level traders now see as the first line of support, before stabilising.
ETF Outflows Add to the Pressure
Institutional demand, which powered much of bitcoin’s rise over the past two years, has also cooled. US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded about $643 million of net outflows on Friday, led by redemptions of roughly $234 million from BlackRock’s fund and about $201 million from Fidelity’s. When ETF investors pull money out, the funds sell bitcoin to meet redemptions, adding direct selling pressure to the spot market.
The outflows capped a difficult week in which sentiment was already damaged by the huge security breach at a major exchange. Crypto-related shares fell alongside the tokens, with large falls for exchange operators and companies that hold bitcoin on their balance sheets.
Fear Returns to the Market
Sentiment gauges reflect the nervous mood. The widely followed Crypto Fear and Greed Index read 30 on Saturday, firmly in “fear” territory and well down from 51 a week earlier and 74 a month ago. The total value of the crypto market stood near $2.7 trillion, with bitcoin accounting for close to 58 percent of it.
Ethereum offered a small bright spot, rising about 2 percent to roughly $2,241 as some traders rotated into the second-largest token, but most major coins remained below their levels of a week ago.
Traders say the coming days will hinge on two things: whether bitcoin can keep holding above the $76,000 area, and whether ETF flows steady when US markets reopen on Monday. After a month in which leverage and bad news combined to knock the market down, investors appear in no hurry to buy the dip aggressively.
