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By , |Edited by
Jun 20, 2025, 6:55 p.m.
- A sudden tumble during U.S. trading hours wiped out bitcoin’s earlier gain to above $106,000, while large cryptos like ETH, SOL, DOGE, and ADA saw even more sizable declines.
- The volatility burst led to $450 million in liquidations, mostly long positions, CoinGlass data shows.
- BTC is caught between in a “stalemate” between the bullish long-term outlook and short-term risk-off sentiment, Unity Wallet’s James Toledano said.
What started as a positive day for crypto markets quickly reversed during the U.S. session with bitcoin
sliding below $103,000 from the $106,500 level just hours earlier.
At press time, bitcoin had pared some of the losses, returning to $103,200, down 1.2% over the past 24 hours.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Other large cryptocurrencies endured steeper declines. Ethereum’s ether
saw a sharp 4.5% drop in just 90 minutes to as low as $2,372, with trading volume spiking to nearly 800,000 ETH, nearly eight times the average hourly volume, per CoinDesk data. Solana’s SOL
, dogecoin
and Cardano’s ADA
were 3%-5% lower over the same period.
The volatility burst caught many traders off-guard, liquidating about $450 million in derivatives trading positions on centralized exchanges across all digital assets, shows. Some $387 million of liquidations were tied to long positions that bet on profiting from rising prices.
While macro risks abound — among them the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran — there was no immediate external reason for the sudden price swing. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 indexes only inched lower during the day.
Zooming out, BTC continues to trade within a sideways range between $100,000 and $110,000, consolidating just below its all-time record level.
“The mixed view of whether BTC will go above $110,000 again or drop into the $90,000 area doesn’t surprise me at all and underscores the overall indecision people and markets feel,” said James Toledano, chief operating officer at Unity Wallet.
“The present BTC stalemate reflects a market caught between bullish long-term sentiment and short-term macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty,” he added.
Krisztian Sandor is a U.S. markets reporter focusing on stablecoins, tokenization, real-world assets. He graduated from New York University’s business and economic reporting program before joining CoinDesk. He holds BTC, SOL and ETH.
CoinDesk Analytics is CoinDesk’s AI-powered tool that, with the help of human reporters, generates market data analysis, price movement reports, and financial content focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain markets.
All content produced by CoinDesk Analytics is undergoes human editing by CoinDesk’s editorial team before publication. The tool synthesizes market data and information from and other sources to create timely market reports, with all external sources clearly attributed within each article.
CoinDesk Analytics operates under CoinDesk’s AI content guidelines, which prioritize accuracy, transparency, and editorial oversight. Learn more about CoinDesk’s approach to AI-generated content in our .
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