Bitcoin Lost $70,000. Its Steady Buyers Left First.

Bitcoin fell about 6% this week. The bigger change was who stopped buying.

It traded near $74,500 early Monday, after a Sunday slide to about $73,650. That left it below Strategy's average cost from the start. By Thursday it had broken its 200-day average. Early Friday it touched about $68,000, then traded near $69,900 shortly before the open.

Ether fell harder. It traded near $2,120 early Monday and broke below $2,000 on Friday, trading near $1,950.

Every source of steady demand weakened at once. Funds sold. A miner sold. The largest corporate holder spent more on its own preferred stock than on coins. Bitcoin fell about 6% in a day while the Nasdaq 100 slipped 0.3%. Rates, not tech, set the price by Friday.

Here are the six forces that drove crypto this week.

Leverage Broke Two Lines

Three waves of forced selling hit in six days.

The first came Sunday afternoon. Bitcoin fell about $2,000 within an hour to near $73,650. The drop began shortly after Nvidia's board statement on its chief executive, with U.S. stock markets closed. More than $1 billion of leveraged bets were wiped out over 24 hours, mostly bullish ones, CoinGlass data show.

The second came Thursday. Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia's chief. Nvidia won back most of a 14% early slide. Bitcoin fell with it and did not come back. It dropped about 3.4% to near $71,400, below its 200-day average of about $73,100. About $700 million of bets were wiped out.

The third came overnight into Friday. Roughly $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion of positions were liquidated, close to 90% of them longs.

Forced Sellers, Not New Views

None of the three drops started with crypto news. Leverage turned outside shocks into breaks of Strategy's cost and the 200-day line. The leverage is lighter now. So is the pool of buyers who would absorb the next drop.

The Anchor Fund Kept Selling

U.S. spot bitcoin funds lost about $1.44 billion over the five sessions through Wednesday. BlackRock's fund supplied about three-quarters of it.

Monday took out $201 million. The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) had its seventh straight day of withdrawals, $1.66 billion since Oct. 30. Tuesday took out $95 million. Wednesday took out $299.8 million, and IBIT alone lost $269.7 million.

The run began with IBIT's $405.3 million exit on Nov. 2, its largest since June. Net flows for 2026 now sit near minus $1.5 billion. At this point in 2024 and 2025, they were near plus $25 billion.

Ether funds lost about $185 million Monday and about $145 million Wednesday.

The Biggest Buyer Became the Biggest Seller

IBIT carried the fund bid for two years. Now its clients lead the redemptions. Last week, buyers outside the funds absorbed the selling. This week they did not, and price fell with the flows.

The Rate Trade Took Over

The two-year Treasury yield rose 34 basis points over two sessions, its sharpest two-day jump in three and a half years.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller set it up Monday. He said he would back a December hike even if inflation improved. If core prices rose 0.3% or more, he said, a half-point move "should be considered."

Core consumer prices rose 0.3% in October. Headline prices rose 0.4%. Kalshi's December hike contract jumped to 91 cents seconds after the release. The 10-year yield reached 5.10% Thursday. The dollar index sat near 103, its highest since April 2025. Gold fell below $4,000.

Producer prices rose 0.3% Friday, below the 0.4% forecast. CME FedWatch then put the odds of a half-point hike near 10%, down from 15% Thursday.

No Yield, No Shelter

Bitcoin pays no interest. With the 10-year above 5% and the dollar at a 19-month high, holding it costs more. Last week bitcoin traded with chips. This week it traded with rates. Friday's softer producer print trimmed the half-point risk but left the hike in place.

Miners and Holders Became Supply

MARA (MARA) sold 13,597 bitcoin after the third quarter ended. That was about 40% of its Sept. 30 holdings.

It sold for about $1.1 billion, near $81,039 a coin. It used $750 million to repay all of its bitcoin-backed loans. It plans to keep selling to fund AI projects and a buyback of up to $500 million. Its shares rose 10.5% in the first full session after the disclosure. Hyperscale Data sold all of its remaining bitcoin.

Other holders showed what their coins carry. Trump Media (DJT) has pledged about 73% of its bitcoin to an options program. Nearly all the rest backs $1 billion of notes that holders can put back for cash on Nov. 30. Nakamoto owes Kraken 165 million USDT, more than its roughly $100 million market value. Ether holder BTCS sold coins below cost to keep an Aave loan healthy.

Pledged, Sold or Borrowed Against

Corporate holders were supposed to be the patient bid. This week one sold 40%, one showed most of its stack pledged, and two borrowers moved closer to their margin terms. MARA's shares rose on the sale. That tells other miners that selling pays.

Strategy Lost Its Cushion and Its Index

Strategy holds 850,364 bitcoin at an average cost of $75,456. At Friday morning's price, that is about $4.7 billion under cost on paper.

The loss is unrealized, and the coins are not pledged against loans. But the buying has thinned. Strategy (MSTR) bought 1,036 bitcoin in the week through Nov. 8 for $81.9 million. It spent $188.3 million, 2.3 times as much, buying back its STRC preferred stock. It was the second straight week of that pattern.

Then MSCI confirmed Strategy's deletion from the MSCI USA Index, and with it MSCI World and ACWI, at the Nov. 30 close. Metaplanet and Upexi go too. SharpLink was only put on watch. Strategy says index-tracking funds hold about 3.1% of its shares. The stock fell about 6.5% Thursday.

The Buyer Needs Buyers

Strategy funds its coins by selling stock. Index funds now have a date to sell that stock, and the coins sit below cost. Nothing forces Strategy to sell bitcoin. But its biggest weekly check is going to its own preferred, not to the coin.

The Cash Left, the Rails Arrived

Stablecoin supply fell $14.2 billion in the 30 days to Nov. 9, the fastest drop since June 2022, Glassnode says.

Tether's USDT supply alone fell about $6.6 billion in 60 days, on-chain analysts say. That is more than twice as fast as after FTX collapsed. Neither major stablecoin lost its dollar peg.

Wall Street kept building anyway. The New York Stock Exchange picked Avalanche for its planned 24/7 tokenized-stock venue. It still needs approval. PNC began letting corporate clients receive USDC, converted to dollars on arrival. Coinbase (COIN) won final approval for a national trust bank. DTCC will connect its tokenization service to Solana in the second half of 2027.

Washington set a date of its own. Sen. Richard Blumenthal gave Binance, Tether, World Liberty Financial and the TRUMP memecoin issuer until Jan. 4 to produce records.

Rails Without Riders

Stablecoins are the cash that funds crypto trading, and that cash is leaving at par. Institutions are building on their own terms and on 2027 timelines. The plumbing is arriving faster than the money to fill it.