The total capitalization of cryptocurrencies fell below $3 trillion on November 21 for the first time in seven months, Decrypt reported. On Friday, positions worth about $1 billion were liquidated in the market in just an hour, it said.

Bitcoin's value has hit its lowest since April. At its lowest in the last 24 hours, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization cost $81,868.75, CoinGecko shows. According to the service, bitcoin lost 2% in less than 10 minutes during trading on Friday.

Over the past 24 hours, about $1.97 billion was liquidated in the crypto market, according to Coinglass. At the same time, the largest 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization (except for stablecoins) fell at double-digit rates (by at least 10%), intensifying the sell-off, Decrypt notes. At bitcoin's price of about $82,000, the reduction in open contracts is equivalent to almost $700 million. That is, about $500 million of long positions on it were liquidated in one hour, the publication notes. Liquidations of long positions also affected Ethereum and Solana - by about $183 million and $56 million, respectively.

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index (The Crypto Fear and Greed Index) is still in the "extreme fear" zone, Decrypt writes.

What are the analysts saying?

"This is the first major flush of positions since Oct. 10," said CryptoQuant analyst Maarten Regtershot. But while the liquidation that day in October was caused by spot market sales, the current drop is due to the liquidation of leveraged positions, he said.

While the overall negative market sentiment is due to changes in fiscal and monetary policy as well as the recent expansion of credit swaps, Friday's decline looks localized and is likely mostly caused by over-leveraged positions of large holders, Decrypt suggests.

"We are in a very challenging situation in the short term," said Caladan head of research Derek Lim. He said current market activity is not in line with key economic factors. He identified several important drivers that could increase market liquidity: the end of quantitative tightening policies, renewed government spending in the US and possible stimulus measures. However, it will take time for these factors to fully affect the market, the analyst added. He noted that this time gap creates a situation in which the market has not yet had time to react to strong economic fundamentals.

Context

Tom Lee, head of research at analyst firm Fundstrat Global Advisors, who was one of the first to publicly build formal models on bitcoin, expects the cryptocurrency to recover in the coming months, Bloomberg writes. By the end of January, Fundstrat estimates bitcoin's value could rise to the $150,000-200,000 range - despite a sharp selloff and multi-billion dollar liquidations in the market.

In 2017, Lee predicted that the cryptocurrency would grow to $55,000 by 2022 - even though it was worth around $2500 when the reports were published. His prediction came true faster than expected: bitcoin surpassed the designated level as early as 2021 and continued to grow, reaching an all-time high of around $126,000 in October 2025.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor

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