Bitcoin printed one of the largest ever daily candles to the downside on Thursday, sliding more than 15%, roughly $10,800, in a move that rippled through derivatives, spot venues, and the US Bitcoin ETF complex.
The scale of the drop is what made it stand out. Not just the percentage drawdown, but the mix of stress signals hitting at once: implied volatility spiking, volumes exploding, and momentum gauges collapsing into levels typically associated with forced selling rather than discretionary risk reduction.
Bitcoin Crash Sparks Capitulation SignalsCoutts also underscored how extreme the momentum reset looked on daily charts, citing a daily RSI of 15.64, “at or below March 2020 COVID crash lows.” He added: “Margin calls are firing. Forced liquidations are likely still working through the system. This has the signature of a capitulation event, but capitulation can be a process, not a single candle (unless we get a massive wick!). These conditions can persist for weeks or even months before a durable low forms.”
Macro trader Alex Krüger stopped short of a price target for the lows, but argued the market was registering the kind of positioning and pricing distortions that tend to cluster around turning points in time.
Krüger’s caveat was just as direct: “In the meantime of course equities need to hold. And having a bottom in does not mean that you will see a major trend from here.”
Galaxy’s Alex Thorn described the tape as historically stretched on RSI measures, saying bitcoin was “the most oversold today than any day since 3AC blew up in June 2022 (30d RSI),” and calling it “basically in the top 3 oversold events ever,” alongside November 2018 and June 2022.
The US spot Bitcoin ETF market didn’t cushion the move, it amplified the day’s activity. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Eric Balchunas said BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) “just crushed its daily volume record with $10b worth of shares traded” as the fund’s price fell 13%, its second-worst daily drop since launch.
Positioning data hinted at a complex, two-sided ETF ecosystem. Head of Research at K33 Research Vetle Lunde noted net equivalent short exposure in short BTC ETFs was nearing the November 2022 peak at 7,745 BTC, while 2x leveraged long BTC ETFs—products that didn’t exist then—currently hold 39,590 BTC, “at levels not seen since Mar 24.”
At press time, BTC rebounded from $60,000 to roughly $64,900, a gain of about 9% from the session low.
