Bitcoin Tests $59K as ETFs Shed $692M, Options Expiry Looms

Bitcoin fell below $59,000 on Friday morning, swept up by a new wave of ETF selling just as one of the biggest options of the year expires.

The largest cryptocurrency was trade about $59,100 on Friday, down 6.4% over the past week and about 53% below October’s record high of $126,080. It changed hands from $58,189 to $60,724 within a 24-hour period, bringing its market cap to almost $1.18 trillion.

On prediction market Myriad, owned by Declutter‘s parent company Dastan, traders expect Bitcoin’s next step to take it to $55,000, giving a 77% chance of that outcome, compared to 72% at the start of the week.

The drop came as U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs fell about $691 million on Thursday, the largest single-day outflow since May 27, according Farside Investors facts. The weakness goes deeper than one session. The annual growth rate of U.S. Bitcoin ETF holdings has fallen to “essentially zero” for the first time since the funds launched in 2024, with the ETFs now increasing the supply of Bitcoin rather than sucking it up, said Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant. told Milky Way Wednesday. For a bottom to form, he said, purchases must stop shrinking and start accelerating again.

The sale sets an awkward stage for Friday, when about $10.6 billion in Bitcoin options expire on Deribit, the biggest quarterly settlement of the year. With Bitcoin trading well below the ‘max pain’ level of roughly $72,000, around 80% of those contracts are on track to expire worthless. The $60,000 limit “remains the definitive line in the sand,” said Mike McCluskey, co-founder of tokenization platform tx. Given the heavy put positioning at that strike, he said, a successful defense would “confirm that dip buyers remain in control,” while a breakout would “likely accelerate the downtrend in this lean liquidity environment.”

The pressure has already torched leveraged traders. More than $1.1 billion in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours as the decline sidelined bullish bets, $875 million of which were long. according to CoinGlass.

Behind the slide is a tighter macro background. Bitcoin has weakened since new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh hawkish debutwith traders bracing for higher-for-longer rates. The drop this week briefly pushed BTC to its lowest level since September 2024, and fell below the 200-week moving average – a level that “historically has served as a crucial psychological and technical floor,” McCluskey said.

On a Thursday AMAGalaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said Bitcoin’s bull case “revolves around two things,” the passage of the Clarity Actand an interest rate cut by the Fed. The war in Iran “has slowed down the austerity cycle,” he said, adding: “If we see the war end and oil prices go back to $60, then you start to see the idea of, maybe that opens the door for a rate cut at the end of the fourth quarter, or even an early rate cut in the first quarter next year.” Until a new spark comes, he sees Bitcoin as having a range, waiting for “a new story” to climb higher.