Crypto Falls With Nasdaq as $717M in Liquidations Hit Market
Bitcoin fell 2.5% to $62,300 and ether dropped more than 4% to $1,650 on Tuesday as a Nasdaq tech selloff spilled into crypto and $717 million in leveraged positions were wiped out.
Quick Insights
- Bitcoin fell 2.5% to $62,300 and ether dropped more than 4% to $1,650 on Tuesday as a Nasdaq tech selloff carried over into digital assets, with altcoins including ENA and HYPE losing 5% to 6%.
- A total of $717 million in leveraged positions were liquidated across the crypto market, amplifying the downswing as automated margin calls forced selling into falling prices. According to Coinglass liquidation data, longs accounted for the majority of those forced closures, consistent with a market that was still carrying significant bullish leverage heading into the session.
- Derivatives data paints a broadly bearish picture, with negative cumulative volume delta across most of the top 25 coins, rising put-call skew, and declining bitcoin futures open interest suggesting sellers are in control.
The crypto market fell sharply on Tuesday, tracking weakness in US technology stocks that sent Nasdaq 100 futures down 2.5% since midnight UTC. Bitcoin dropped to $62,300, a 2.5% decline on the day, while ether slid more than 4% to $1,650. Altcoins bore the brunt of the move, with ethena (ENA) and Hyperliquid's HYPE among the hardest hit, each losing between 5% and 6%, as $717 million in liquidations across the market forced automated selling on top of the underlying price decline.
The proximate cause is a continuation of Monday's tech-stock retreat, driven by profit-taking and concern about the trajectory of US bond yields. Patrick Munnelly, market strategy partner at TickMill, attributed the equity weakness to those two factors, and the correlation between crypto and risk assets has been tight enough throughout 2026 that a Nasdaq selloff of this size reliably pulls digital assets lower. The Dollar Index (DXY) rose to 101.15 on Tuesday, its highest level since May 2025, adding an additional headwind for risk assets priced in dollars.
SpaceX Perpetuals See Open Interest Surge 10% as Price Falls 15%
One of the more striking data points in today's session sits in the derivatives market for SpaceX perpetual futures. Open interest across SpaceX perps listed on Hyperliquid, Binance and other exchanges rose 10% even as the price dropped 15%, a combination that validates a downtrend rather than signalling a reversal: new money is entering the market on the short side, not buying the dip. SpaceX futures are now the sixth-largest by open interest globally, ahead of several prominent crypto assets including ZEC, though still below BTC, ETH, XRP and others. The pattern echoes what we noted earlier this week when SpaceX surged past $2.5 trillion, drawing risk capital from the same pool that typically flows into crypto.
XRP futures are showing a similarly bearish configuration, with open interest climbing back to eight-month highs at 2.38 billion tokens even as the token dropped nearly 2% on the week. The OI-adjusted 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) is negative for the second consecutive day, meaning the price action is being driven by traders actively shorting at market prices rather than passive limit orders sitting below. Across most of the top 25 coins, sellers appear to be in control, with negative CVD readings widespread.
Privacy Coins Hold as AI Tokens and Zcash Follow the Broader Market Lower
The divergence within the altcoin space is worth noting. Privacy coins dash and monero held up considerably better than the rest of the market, with DASH losing just 0.2% and XMR about 0.7%, suggesting some rotation into assets with lower correlation to tech stocks. Zcash, a rival privacy coin that was hit by an AI-inspired exploit earlier this month, was not so fortunate, losing 4.2% in line with the broader altcoin market. AI-themed tokens including FET, RENDER and TAO dropped 3% to 5%, as negative sentiment from tech stocks fed directly into the crypto assets most associated with the same narrative.
Average RSI at 39 Points to Oversold Conditions but Options Lean Bearish
The average crypto relative strength index across the market sits at 39.05, a level that technically signals oversold conditions and could provide the basis for a short-term bounce or relief rally during the session. But the options market is sending a different message. Heading into Friday's quarterly expiry, the structure is long calls, but those bullish bets are sitting on losses as spot prices have collapsed throughout the quarter. Put options, meanwhile, are in the money. Put-call skew continues to show investors paying for downside protection rather than upside exposure, a persistent feature of cautious sentiment that has defined the market since May. On Deribit, the $60,000 strike put carries over $1 billion in notional open interest, and the $55,000 put was among the most actively traded contracts in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin's 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, has also turned higher from 40%, a move that typically accompanies bearish price trends rather than preceding recoveries. For the broader context on how sentiment has tracked throughout this cycle, see our Fear and Greed analysis and our live ETF tracker for institutional flow data.
Bitcoin futures open interest has slipped to 720,000 BTC from 742,000 BTC last week, having peaked at 800,000 BTC earlier this month, suggesting a portion of the leveraged long book has been cleared. Ether futures OI has bounced slightly from five-week lows to 14.13 million ETH, but remains well below the 15.98 million ETH peak recorded on 28 May. The picture across the market is one of persistent de-leveraging against a macro backdrop that is not yet offering crypto any relief.
