Bitcoin’s price currently stands just under the daily pivot of $59,888 and is changing hands at $59,597 having put in lower highs since June 14th and taken a fast lunge from 63,300 to 58,075 in the last week and this part was pretty straightforward.
The part not yet priced into spot is that 80 percent of open interest ($8.6B out of $10.6B total) on today’s expiry is sitting out of the money, as well as that the $55,000 strike put represented by far the highest trading contract in the last 24 hours. Following this, the spot may consolidate. Desks in the derivatives domain would seem to be placing bets on the next move.
The liquidation count is less significant compared to who got liquidated
$1.26 billion was wiped out across 209,000 traders in the past 24 hours and the market participants are just focusing on that headline but there is something more important to track. More than $450 million of that was made up of leveraged longs in the time frame of just one hour and that implies that the move was not sentiment that was simply grinding lower. It was more of a stop cascade.
Open interest was sitting near $111 billion going into June and that was mostly long. Considering the leverage side of it, the positions were on 10x leverage or more than that. This is the reason behind a 2.6 percent drop that turned into a 4-5 percent air pocket.
This Situation took place a second time in a single month. The time period between June 4 and June 6 totaled $3 billion unwound in those 48 hours. In the worst session, longs were responsible for making up close to 85 percent of the aggregated BTC liquidations. The market participants have now learned twice that leverage gets punished the same week rates get repriced.
The 7-period RSI is at 24.9, while the RSI 14 reading is 30.46. Both of the mentioned figures are sitting in oversold territory, and the other indicator, the MACD histogram, has flipped positive and is showing a reading of +69.43 even though both the MACD line and signal line are still trending in the negative zone.
What actually fueled the recent move
May PCE jumped to 4.1 percent from 3.8 percent and subsequently caused more damage relative to a derivative screen’s carnage. Additionally, the rate cut odds pushed out and following that, the Nasdaq 100’s showed a reversal on the same day itself. Bitcoin also fell just under the $59,000 zone. The Fed is already parked at 3.5 percent-3.75 percent with hikes as a live risk, which got a clear mandate not to let off the throttle. Options skew is also revealing the same message on sidewaysness, despite it going from -18 percent to -1.9 percent over a two-week period. For the market participants it will look like easing but that is not the case.
Where the next forced move sits
$58,075 is the swing low level in terms of structure and this can be clearly identified on the previous sell-off as a support level. In the meantime, this largest cryptocurrency continues to be under its daily reference at $59,888 after changing hands below $59,888. If there is a break lower, then the eyes will be on the $55,000 level of puts that are now making up the most volume in the options market.
The $60,000 strike is currently the bigger near-term level, accounting for over $1 billion in put notional on one of the largest derivatives exchanges, Deribit. As the spot gets closer to that area, the options sellers are likely to make adjustments on the hedges. This practice will then be responsible for adding pressure around the strike.
The Fear and Greed metric shows the reading at 15, which has a 30-day average of 19, showing that the market sentiment has been on the weaker side. Bitcoin (BTC) is at present trading about 53 percent down from its October 2025 peak value of $126,080 and this makes the move from $63,300 to $58,000 look somewhat less like panic and more akin to another phase followed by a longer unwind.
