TL;DR
- Bitcoin hovered near $70,000 as BTC fell 2.3% and total 24-hour liquidations topped $250 million, keeping $68,500 in focus for a support retest into Tuesday’s open.
- A $71,000 push liquidated $130M shorts before a reversal near $68,000 liquidated $150M longs, with liquidity flagged at $72,000–$74,000 and $66,000–$68,000.
- Material Indicators cited whale selling and CryptoQuant warned demand momentum turned negative as inflows lagged spending, leaving price action sensitive to leverage sweeps.
Bitcoin’s slide into Tuesday’s Wall Street open punished traders on both sides as the market stayed rangebound near $70,000 while liquidations surged. The bigger story is that calm-looking price action can still torch leverage when liquidity sits close to spot. Data showed BTC down 2.3% on the day, putting $68,500 in focus and keeping traders anchored to the bottom of the local range. Even so, CoinGlass data showed the prior 24 hours produced more than $250 million in liquidations across crypto, underscoring how fast risk cascades.
Bitcoin Bears press for control as demand falters
A trader in the Wealth Capital community described the whipsaw: BTC ran to $71,000 and liquidated $130 million in shorts, then snapped back toward $68,000 and liquidated another $150 million in longs. This tape is acting like a liquidation map, sweeping leverage pockets rather than choosing a clean trend. The same analysis pointed to large liquidity waiting above $72,000 to $74,000, but argued an even bigger cluster is building between $66,000 and $68,000, making that zone the higher-probability target for a sweep. An accompanying heatmap visualized liquidations stacked above and below spot during the session.
Other market watchers said bears are attempting to “regain control,” with leverage still sensitive around local range extremes. The near-term setup is about whether sellers can force a grind into support before bulls can reassert momentum. Material Indicators told followers that its “FireCharts binned CVD” showed “purple whales” continued selling over the last 24 hours, and it warned that conditions were setting up for Bitcoin to grind into a retest of local support on lower time frames. That tone kept traders watching exchange order books. Traders treated the range floor as a line that could break.
Onchain demand signals added another layer of caution. The warning from CryptoQuant is that fresh capital is not keeping pace with supply, weakening the market’s ability to absorb selling. Contributor CryptoZeno wrote that while coin spending is increasing, capital inflows are not expanding at the same speed, pushing demand into negative territory. The post said similar divergences in prior cycles often marked transition phases where bullish momentum slowed before either consolidation or correction unfolded. Previous coverage also noted miner inflows to exchanges rising to cover expenses. That combination leaves BTC vulnerable to prolonged acceptance, analysts said.
