Bitcoin fell from about $75,200 to $73,477 on Coinbase in the five minutes to 21:55 UTC on Sunday 8 November, and by Monday morning it had not won the level back. The move came with $1.13 billion in liquidations over 24 hours, 90.7% of them long bets, according to CoinGlass data read at 08:10 UTC. Bitcoin traded near $73,730 at 08:09 UTC, down 2.75% on 24 hours, per Coindaro’s market snapshot.
Ether took the heavier hit. It traded near $2,090 at 08:09 UTC, -6.52% on the day, and ether positions made up close to half of all the money liquidated. The whole crypto market was worth about $2.45 trillion at that time, -6.68% on 24 hours, and the Fear & Greed index stood at 29 (Fear).
Nothing about the Sunday evening move has a proven cause. Outlets that covered it point to thin weekend trading, a crowd of leveraged longs, an investigation at Nvidia and stalled US talks with Iran. Monday brings Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman at 13:40 UTC, and Tuesday the October consumer price index at 13:30 UTC.
Bitcoin price today: one five-minute candle did most of the damage
For most of Sunday, bitcoin did very little. Between midnight and 20:59 UTC on 8 November, Coinbase hourly candles stayed between $75,545 and $76,095, the same quiet weekend we described in Sunday morning’s bitcoin price report.
The slide started around 21:45 UTC. Then came one minute candle. At 21:55 UTC, Coinbase’s BTC-USD book opened at $74,811, printed a low of $73,477 and closed at $73,709. About 350 bitcoin changed hands in that minute, against roughly 1 to 60 in each of the minutes before it. From about $75,200 at 21:50 UTC, that is a fall of about 2.3% in five minutes.
The low depends on where you look. CoinDesk’s own index put it at $73,761, so the bottom sits somewhere between about $73,500 and $73,760 depending on the venue. Bitcoin.com described a move from $75,690 to $73,477 in 15 minutes; the higher figure is the price an hour earlier, at 20:50 UTC, and most of the fall came in the last few minutes.
Bitcoin was back at $74,182 at 22:00 UTC and reached $75,640 in the 23:00 UTC hour, a pattern CoinDesk summed up as a drop followed by a pop. It held between $75,070 and $75,500 until 02:00 UTC on Monday.
A second, slower leg lower started in the Asian morning: the 05:00 UTC candle fell from $74,717 to $74,207, the 07:00 UTC candle touched $73,660, and the 08:00 UTC candle set the day’s low so far at $73,636. Monday’s Coinbase range up to that hour runs from $75,500 to $73,636, about 2.5%.
| Time (UTC) | Coinbase BTC-USD | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 8 Nov, 00:00 to 20:59 | $75,545 to $76,095 | Quiet Sunday range |
| 8 Nov, 21:55 (1-minute candle) | Open $74,811, low $73,477, close $73,709 | About 350 BTC traded in one minute |
| 8 Nov, 22:00 | $74,182 | First rebound |
| 8 Nov, 23:00 hour | High $75,640 | Most of the drop recovered |
| 9 Nov, 02:00 hour | High $75,500 | Monday’s high so far |
| 9 Nov, 05:00 hour | $74,717 to $74,207 | Second leg lower begins |
| 9 Nov, 08:00 hour | Low $73,636 | Monday’s low so far |
Seen over a week, the move is bigger. Bitcoin’s Coinbase high on Wednesday 4 November, after the US midterms, was $81,130.79. The daily lows since then were $75,035 on Thursday, $74,722 on Friday, $75,453 on Saturday and $73,477 on Sunday. The Defiant called it a four-week low, while CoinDesk and Bitcoin.com both described the price as the lowest since August. In the last 31 daily candles on Coinbase, nothing printed lower than Sunday’s $73,477.
Ether fell about 6% in the same hour, and kept falling on Monday
Ether’s drop was more than twice as deep as bitcoin’s. On Coinbase it was at $2,229.50 at 20:00 UTC on Sunday and touched $2,089.01 within the 21:00 UTC hourly candle, the same hour as the bitcoin flash. That is a fall of roughly 6%. It recovered to $2,157 by 02:00 UTC, then went lower again: the 07:00 UTC candle on Monday reached $2,080.35.
The four-day picture is harsher still. Ether’s Coinbase high on 5 November was $2,434.50; at about $2,090 on Monday morning, that is a decline of about 14%, a figure we computed from Coinbase candles. Over roughly four weeks, The Defiant counts ether down 18.8%, against 12.2% for bitcoin.
Other large coins moved between the two. At 08:09 UTC, Coindaro’s snapshot had Solana near $85.57 (-3.86% on 24 hours) and XRP near $1.083 (-6.77% on the day and -13.34% on seven days). Bitcoin’s share of the total market was 60.2%, ether’s 10.4%.
Bitcoin liquidations: $1.13 billion, 91% longs, mostly in one evening
CoinGlass, which aggregates forced closures across derivatives exchanges, showed $1.13 billion liquidated in 24 hours at 08:10 UTC on Monday: $1.03 billion of long positions and $105.37 million of shorts. It counted 170,717 traders liquidated. These totals move all day as the 24-hour window slides, so the figures below belong to that one reading.
The time windows show when the damage happened. The 12-hour total was $1.08 billion, with $995.20 million of longs. The four-hour total was only $113.21 million, and the last hour $67.06 million. In other words, almost all of the liquidations came in the Sunday evening cascade; Monday’s second leg lower added little more than $110 million in four hours.
| Coin (24 hours to 08:10 UTC) | Longs liquidated | Shorts liquidated |
|---|---|---|
| Ether (ETH) | $455.03 million | $38.14 million |
| Bitcoin (BTC) | $278.63 million | $23.68 million |
| Solana (SOL) | $39.2 million | Under $3 million |
| XRP | $37.6 million | Under $3 million |
| Hyperliquid (HYPE) | $21.7 million | Under $3 million |
| Zcash (ZEC) | $14.3 million | Under $3 million |
Ether positions lost about $493 million in total, against about $302 million for bitcoin. The largest single liquidation in 24 hours was a $48.16 million long on Binance’s ETHUSDT contract, closed at $2,095.50. Over the latest four hours, Binance accounted for 49.8% of liquidations, Hyperliquid 15.8% (all longs), Gate 11.6%, Bybit 7.6% and OKX 7.2%.
Earlier snapshots covered a different window. CoinDesk, writing at 03:21 UTC, reported more than $1 billion with $913 million of longs, ether at $448 million and bitcoin at $272 million. Bitcoin.com relayed an X post by Watcher Guru saying $1 billion was wiped out in 10 to 15 minutes. We cannot verify that timing; what the CoinGlass windows do show is about $1.08 billion within 12 hours.
Some single accounts took large hits. A Hyperliquid trader’s long of 56,667 ether, worth about $118.4 million, was fully liquidated, according to the on-chain tracker Lookonchain as cited by Bitcoin.com, which put the trader’s losses across two accounts at about $44.8 million. The same report lists a wallet that borrowed $22 million in USDT on Aave and bought 10,000 ether at $2,155.
Leverage after the flush: funding still positive, and more bitcoin in open interest
On Binance, Monday’s data suggests the flush cleared only part of the leverage. The funding rate on the BTCUSDT perpetual, the fee that keeps the contract close to the spot price, settled at +0.0100% at 08:00 UTC. It had been +0.0034% at 16:00 UTC on Sunday and +0.0059% at midnight. A positive rate means long holders pay short holders, so buyers are still willing to pay to hold leveraged bets.
Ether looks different. Binance’s ETHUSDT funding settled at -0.0047% at the same time, so shorts were the ones paying. The Block quoted Dominick John of Zeus Research saying deeply negative funding pointed to crowded shorts; on bitcoin at Binance, that is not the case this morning.
Binance’s hourly data shows BTCUSDT open interest at about $7.28 billion to $7.31 billion all Sunday, or roughly 96,000 to 96,400 bitcoin. It fell to about $7.05 billion (94,664 BTC) at 23:00 UTC, then rebuilt overnight to 97,457 BTC, worth about $7.20 billion, at 08:00 UTC on Monday. Measured in coins, there are more open bitcoin contracts on Binance now than before the drop: traders reopened positions into the dip. This is one venue, not the whole market, and the data does not say which side those new positions are on.
Strategy’s 849,327 bitcoin are under water, by our calculation
The fall puts Strategy’s stack below what the company paid for it. According to The Defiant, Strategy holds 849,327 bitcoin bought for a total of $64.08 billion, an average of $75,451 per coin. At $73,730, the 08:09 UTC price, the holding is worth about $62.6 billion, about $1.5 billion below its cost. That is our arithmetic (849,327 times the snapshot price), not a figure from Strategy. Our report on Strategy’s third quarter explained how its record profit rested on a bitcoin price that has since slipped away.
Strategy usually files a Form 8-K on Monday when it has bought bitcoin the week before. None had been published when this piece was written, so we do not know whether it bought during the dip. CoinShares’ weekly fund-flow report is also due today and was not out at the time of writing.
What outlets blamed: a thin weekend, Nvidia and Iran
A market open while Wall Street was closed
With US cash markets shut for the weekend, crypto perpetual futures were the only place where traders could react to news, and they did so on thin liquidity, Rick Maeda of Laevitas told The Block. Dan Khus of LVRG Research called it a classic risk-off move made larger by leverage, according to the same report. CoinDesk wrote that whether the bounce holds depends on how traditional markets open on Monday.
Nvidia: an investigation, and an allegation that remains unconfirmed
The Block, CoinDesk and Journal du Coin all tied the weekend selling in part to Nvidia. The chipmaker’s board has opened an independent investigation, led by a committee of independent directors with an outside law firm, after media reports that chief executive Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. That allegation is reported and unconfirmed; Nvidia has not endorsed it. The board said it has “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised”, according to The Block, and a spokesperson said Huang remains CEO.
The market read showed up on crypto venues first. Hyperliquid’s NVDA-USDC perpetual fell 3.8% in 24 hours to $180.50 by 03:10 UTC, according to The Block, against a Friday Nasdaq close of $186.64 cited by CoinDesk. Asian stocks did not follow: The Block reported the Taiwan Weighted index up 5.4%, the Nikkei up 3.2% and the Kospi up 1.7% on Monday, while bitcoin slid.
Iran talks and the rate outlook
CoinDesk, Cryptoast and Bitcoin.com also cited US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who they said called Iran’s demands “outrageous” and said talks had made no progress. Rates matter too: October payrolls rose by 165,000 against 65,000 expected, and CME FedWatch put the chance of a December Fed rate hike at about four in five, according to Cryptoast. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost about $1.28 billion last week, as we reported on 7 November; our Sunday look at the week ahead covers the stablecoin side.
The day’s agenda: Bowman at 13:40 UTC, CPI on Tuesday, RAIN and difficulty
The Federal Reserve Board’s November calendar lists a discussion with Michelle W. Bowman, Vice Chair for Supervision, on community banking at the Mutual Board Summit Conference in Boston, at 8:40 a.m. ET, which is 13:40 UTC. It is a discussion, not a speech, and its topic is banking supervision rather than interest rates.
The rate-relevant Bowman events come on Tuesday, after the inflation data. The same calendar lists a speech on the economic outlook at 3:30 p.m. ET (20:30 UTC) at the C. Peter McColough Series in Washington, and a second Economic Outlook talk at 6:30 p.m. ET (23:30 UTC), held virtually. Christopher Waller also speaks on the economic outlook in London on Tuesday at 09:00 UTC.
The October consumer price index is due on Tuesday 10 November at 8:30 a.m. ET, 13:30 UTC, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics schedule. Because of last year’s government shutdown, some indexes will come without a 12-month change, as our review of bitcoin’s US week explained.
Two crypto dates fall in the same window. The monthly RAIN token tranche of about 37.2 billion tokens is due on 10 November, at an hour Rain has not published (our RAIN unlock page has the figures). RAIN was down 17.25% on 24 hours at 08:09 UTC; we found no confirmed reason for that fall. Bitcoin’s next difficulty adjustment comes about 13 November. Our difficulty report gave a cut of about 4.8%; current estimates are larger, about 6.4% according to the mempool.space explorer at 08:14 UTC on Monday.
Later in the week, the Fed calendar lists Michael Barr on Thursday 12 November at 10:00 a.m. ET (15:00 UTC) and Bowman again on Friday 13 November at 10:50 a.m. ET (15:50 UTC). AI cloud companies CoreWeave and Nebius report this week, Bitcoin.com noted, and Nvidia’s own results are due on 17 November, according to Journal du Coin. The minutes of the Fed’s 27 and 28 October meeting follow on 18 November at 19:00 UTC.
Price levels quoted by outlets give a sense of what traders watch, not a forecast. CoinDesk put bitcoin’s 200-day average near $73,150 and its 100-day average near $77,430. Criptovaluta.it named $72,000 as a first support. On Polymarket, traders priced a 67.5% chance that bitcoin dips to $72,500 in November and 46.5% for $70,000, Bitcoin.com reported; those are market odds, not facts about what will happen.
What we still do not know
No one has shown what set off the 21:55 UTC candle, and no exchange-by-exchange breakdown of that minute is public. Liquidation totals differ between data providers and between snapshot times. The content of Bowman’s Monday discussion is unknown until she speaks, and the CPI forecasts and hike odds quoted here come from other outlets.
Strategy’s Monday filing and CoinShares’ weekly fund flows were not out at the time of writing. Tuesday’s 13:30 UTC CPI release is the next fixed date.