Bitcoin Crashed Below $60K and $1.5 Billion Was Wiped Out

The hot inflation print hit crypto the hardest. After Thursday's PCE report showed inflation at a 3-year high, Bitcoin tumbled below 60,000 dollars toward 58,000, its lowest in years, while Ether dropped more than 5 percent. Roughly 1.5 billion dollars in leveraged positions were liquidated in a day.

The trigger was the macro, not crypto itself. Inflation running at 4.1 percent reinforced expectations that the Fed will hike rather than cut, and higher rates and a stronger dollar drain money out of the riskiest assets first. Bitcoin still trades like a high-beta tech bet when fear spikes, so it fell harder than stocks did on the same news. The Fed set the tone again.

Leverage turned a drop into a cascade. When the price broke lower, traders who had borrowed to bet on a rise were forced to sell, with more than 130,000 accounts liquidated and around 900 million dollars in longs wiped out in 24 hours by some counts, near 1.5 billion by others. Forced selling feeds on itself, pushing the price down faster than the news alone would. That is the mechanics of a liquidation cascade.

The timing made it worse. The PCE shock landed close to a large quarterly options expiry, a moment when big positions roll over and volatility tends to spike. A leveraged market hitting a macro shock and an expiry at once is a recipe for violent moves. The drop was as much about positioning as about fundamentals.

The honest read is that this is painful but familiar. Bitcoin has fallen this hard before and recovered, and a leverage flush, while brutal, clears out the speculative excess that builds up in calmer times. Sentiment is back in extreme fear, the same condition that has marked past lows, though fear can persist and the price can fall further. A washout is not the same as a bottom.

So a macro number outside crypto sent the market into another violent leg down, and the leverage did the rest. Bitcoin under 60,000, Ether down hard, 1.5 billion in positions gone. The Fed, not crypto, is still driving the bus. Watch whether 58,000 holds and whether the forced selling finally exhausts itself.