Bitcoin falls to $81K, triggering $1.7B in liquidations

Bitcoin has fallen to a nine-month low of $81,000, causing billions in liquidations over the past day as escalating tensions in the Middle East and US President Donald Trump’s fresh threats of tariffs caused traders to sell off.

Bitcoin fell to a low of $81,058 on Coinbase in early trading on Friday, its lowest point since April, according to TradingView. The cryptocurrency has dropped 35% from its all-time high of $126,000 in October.

CoinGlass data shows 270,000 traders were liquidated in the past 24 hours, with total liquidations hitting $1.68 billion. The majority of those liquidations, or 93%, were levered long positions predominantly in BTC and Ether.

Bitcoin is now at a crucial support zone on the monthly time frame, having hit a nine-month low. A wider crypto market rout has wiped $200 billion from total capitalization over the past 24 hours.

Geopolitical tensions and tariffs tank markets

The drop comes as the US dispatched another warship to the Middle East amid the country’s rising tensions with Iran, with Trump stating that he plans to speak with Tehran.

“We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to Iran right now, and it would be great if we didn’t have to use them,” Trump told reporters Thursday. 

Trump also declared a national emergency and signed an executive order on Thursday that would impose tariffs on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, causing further concerns for traders.

Gold also sold off with a 9% decline since its all-time high of $5,600 per ounce on Thursday, while silver has corrected 11.5%. 

Tech earnings and AI market fears add to selloff

Jeff Mei, chief operations officer at the BTSE exchange, thinks that disappointing tech revenue reports had an impact.

“Last night’s market dip had a clear correlation to Microsoft’s earnings flop,” he told Cointelegraph. 

Microsoft’s stock tanked 10% on Thursday in the sharpest daily decline since March 2020 after reporting record spending and slowing cloud sales growth. 

“Investors are worried that a broader pullback in AI-related tech stocks will affect the market as a whole, and some are derisking their portfolios,” he said.

We think the dip was relatively overblown as cryptocurrencies have already declined since October, and that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remain at an attractive price with limited downside.