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

Bitcoin fell below $59,000 on Friday morning, pulled by a fresh sell-off in ETFs as one of the biggest year-end picks.

The biggest cryptocurrency was sales around $59,100 on Friday, down 6.4% on the previous week and about 53% below the record of $126,080 set in October. It changed hands in 24 hours from $58,189 to $60,724, leaving its market capitalization at around $1.18 trillion.

On Myriad prediction market, of Decrypt‘s parent company Dastan, entrepreneurs expect Bitcoin’s next move to take it to $ 55,000, and put a 77% chance of that result, from 72% at the beginning of the week.

That came as Bitcoin ETFs lost $691 million on Thursday, their biggest one-day outflow since May 27, according to Farside Investors data. The weakness runs deeper than one part. Annual growth in the US ETF Bitcoin Holdings has dropped to “zero” for the first time since the fund was launched in 2024, ETFs are now increasing the availability of Bitcoin instead of dampening it, CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno. he said Milk Road Wednesday. In order for the floor to stabilize, he said, purchases must stop slowing and start running again.

The sale sets up a disappointing session on Friday, where about $10.6 billion in Bitcoin options end on Deribit, the largest quarterly settlement. With Bitcoin trading below the roughly $72,000 “max pain” level, some 80% of these contracts are on track to expire worthless. The $60,000 token “remains a definitive line in the sand,” said Mike McCluskey, co-founder of tokenization platform tx. Given the scale of the threat, he said, a successful defense would “ensure that dip buyers are in control,” while the breach “could be more effective in low-income areas.”

The pressure has already heated up struggling traders. More than $1.1 billion in combined crypto space was liquidated in the past 24 hours as a drop caught an offside bet, $875 million of which was long, according to CoinGlass.

The back of the slide is very strong. Bitcoin has weakened since the new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh hawkish at firstand traders looking for the highest prices. The decline sent BTC to its lowest level since September 2024 this week, the decline below its 200-week moving average—a level that has “historically been the most emotionally and technically challenging,” according to McCluskey.

In Thursday ORGalaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said Bitcoin’s bullish problem “has to do with two things,” para Clarity Actand reduce the Fed rate. The Iran war has “slowed down,” he said, adding that “When we see the war end and oil prices return to $60 then you will start to see this idea, maybe that opens the door to a late cut in the fourth quarter, or even an early quarter price cut next year.” Until the new light arrives, they see Bitcoin in different directions, waiting for “another new story” to rise to the top.