Morning Minute: Over $650M Liquidated as BTC Erases Last Week's Gains

By Tyler Warner

📈 📉 Crypto Recovers, Then Reverses

Whale accumulation and ETF inflows had paused the Bitcoin selloff. At least temporarily.

But a Sunday night selloff has renewed worries around market conditions.

📌 What Happened

After weeks of heavy selling pressure, Bitcoin spent the back half of the holiday week doing something it hasn’t done in a while: recovering.

The driver - multiple large BTC holder cohorts flipped from net distribution to net accumulation for the first time in months.

On-chain data showed that the 10,000+ BTC “mega-whale” cohort shifted into positive accumulation territory for the first time since August. Their accumulation-trend score jumped toward the high end of the range, signaling that the biggest balance sheets were finally adding rather than trimming.

Right behind them, the 1,000-10,000 BTC cohort registered a similar flip into net buying after weeks of steady outflows.

And retail holding < 1 BTC showed the strongest accumulation since July.

At the same time, ETF outflows slowed meaningfully and flipped to net inflows.

The BTC ETFs saw $70M in net inflows on the week, the first week of inflows since Oct 24.

Even stronger, the ETH ETFs saw a whopping $312M in net inflows (their strongest since Oct 10).

All resulting in a 10% gain across the board for crypto majors on the week.

Until last night.

Bitcoin fell from a local high near $92,000 all the way through $86,000 in a major Sunday night selloff that led to $650M+ in liquidations.

As the dust settles this morning, BTC is holding at $85,700 and crypto majors are down 6-8% across the board.

Not the start to December that we wanted. And now even Saylor is talking about selling.

🧠 Why It Matters

This is a critical time for Bitcoin and crypto.

The 4-year cycle truthers and bears are out in full force, fully expecting this cycle to repeat all of the others, meaning a Bitcoin dip to the $70k range or lower.

And then for most of last week, the bulls finally got some glimmers of hope. Prices stabilized and rebounded. Whales started buying again. ETFs flipped positive.

But then a whole week of progress reversed last night in a few hours.

This week will be very telling about the near-term future for crypto prices.

If the whales keep buying, they can put a bottom in on Bitcoin (and likely the broader crypto sector). And the ETFs will likely follow suit.

Else, we likely revisit the lows around $80k or perhaps go lower.

We will find out soon enough.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are red and reversing all of last week’s gains; BTC -6% at $85,800; ETH -6% at $2,820, BNB -7% at $822, SOL -7% at $127
• MYX (+15%) and JST (+4%) led top movers
• Over $650M was liquidated from the crypto market over the past day, with $580M in longs wiped out after BTC dipped below $86k
• ZEC was hit the hardest of all top tokens, down 20% to $355 and now down 35% on the week
• Tether founder Paolo Ardoino once again spoke out against the latest round of Tether FUD, explaining how Tether is not at risk of insolvency
• China’s central bank confirmed that crypto is illegal and signaled a crackdown incoming
• Robinhood is partnering with Susquehanna to launch a new CFTC-licensed exchange, clearing the way for a big move into prediction markets
• Pavel Durov announced a new decentralized confidential compute network ‘Cocoon’ where GPU owners on the network earn TON rewards
• JPMorgan introduced a new structured BTC bond-like product that pays investors 16% min up to 50% pending BTC performance with some downside protection up to 30%
• Sony Bank is planning to launch a US dollar-pegged stablecoin as early as 2026

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

• The BTC ETFs had net inflows of $70M last week, with the ETH ETFs seeing $312M
• The cap on IBIT options was raised to 1M contracts (up from 25k max), now the same as most global equities
• Saylor teased green dots coming this week instead of traditional orange dots, leading to speculation around selling of BTC to buy back MSTR

In Memes / Onchain Movers

• Memecoin leaders are very red down 5-10%; DOGE -9%, Shiba -6%, PEPE -10%, PENGU -10%, BONK -10%, TRUMP -6%, SPX -11%, and FARTCOIN -11%
• No notable onchain movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• Hyperliquid token unlocks began, with 1.75M tokens distributed across team members so far
• MegaETH refunded all the deposits to its pre-deposit bridge
• Jupiter shared that HumidiFi’s WET token will be the first token on new DTF platform, launching December 3

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• NFT leaders were mostly red down 2-7%; Punks +1% at 30.9 ETH, Pudgy -6% at 5.4, BAYC -2% at 5.84 ETH; Hypurr’s -7% at 620 HYPE
• CryptoDickButts (+11%) led notable movers

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