Key points

  • Bitcoin broke the 19 Aug low of $64,116 and printed $63,854 on Kraken, its weakest price since 17 Aug. It was near $64,479 at 21:34 UTC.
  • The level to watch is that $63,854 low. Below it, the mid-August lows near $62,500 are the next marker; above, $65,760 is this afternoon’s low, now overhead.
  • A daily close back above $65,760 would ease the break. Bitcoin is down about 13.7% since Monday’s open.

The August floor gave way. Nobody rang a bell.

There was no data release or central-bank event on Saturday evening, and we have no verified trigger. The slide came in thin weekend trade, and The Kobeissi Letter flagged the break on X at 21:27 UTC.

Where it stands

Kraken’s 20:45 UTC bar took bitcoin to $64,450. The 21:00 bar closed at $64,205, and the 21:15 bar dipped to $63,854 before a bounce to $64,583. Coinbase’s 24-hour low was $63,891.

Bitcoin opened the UTC day at $68,237 and Monday at $74,742. The last time Kraken traded lower was 17 Aug, when the daily low was $62,683.

Ether fell to $1,750.67 on Kraken and $1,750.05 on Coinbase, its weakest since 13 Jul. It was near $1,779, down about 7.7% on the day and 16.3% since Monday. The Kobeissi Letter said ether fell below $1,750; neither venue we checked printed under that level.

CoinMarketCap put the total crypto market at about $2.17 trillion at 21:29 UTC, against $2.53 trillion a week earlier. That is roughly $359 billion erased in seven days. Kobeissi’s figure for the week was $330 billion.

Who got carried out

CoinGlass’s 24-hour table showed about $518 million of bitcoin positions liquidated and about $380 million of ether, as of about 21:33 UTC. Across the nine largest crypto assets on its list, the total topped $1.1 billion, and about 93% of it hit longs.

Kobeissi put total liquidations at $1.8 billion over 24 hours. CoinGlass’s headline total did not load for us, so we could not confirm that figure.

Put simply, a liquidation is an exchange closing a borrowed bet that has run out of margin, and each forced sale can push the price lower still. Here is how a liquidation works.

On Deribit, bitcoin perpetual open interest was about $725 million at 21:34 UTC, flat against the afternoon. Deribit’s DVOL index, a gauge of 30-day implied volatility, climbed to 48.2 in the 21:00 UTC hour from 43.9 at 14:00.

Funding has tipped negative. OKX’s ether rate was about minus 0.011% per eight hours and bitcoin’s about minus 0.002%, so shorts are paying longs.

The flow backdrop was already weak. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $1.07 billion over the week to 13 Nov, according to our ETF Desk.

The levels

The level to watch is $63,854. A daily close under it would put the mid-August lows, between $62,490 and $62,860 on Kraken, back in view.

Above, $64,116 and then $65,760 are now resistance. A recovery above $65,760 would leave tonight’s break looking like a weekend wash-out rather than a new leg.

The alternative read: negative funding and liquidations that skew this heavily to longs often mark a flush of leverage, not the start of a trend. That is a pattern, not a promise, and Sunday’s weekly close is the next test.

For how the day began, see this morning’s First Print, and for the afternoon break under $66,000, this afternoon’s Market Read.

As of 21:34 UTC, BTC is trading near $64,479 on Kraken.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.