Bitcoin Has Longest Losing Streak Since August in Bruising Week

(Bloomberg) — Bitcoin posted its longest losing streak since August, weighed down by liquidations of bullish bets and this week’s rare sale of tokens by the dominant corporate buyer.

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The original cryptocurrency fell for the fifth straight day on Thursday, tumbling as low as $61,322 before recouping some losses.

Bitcoin is now trading at a four-month low and close to testing the market bottom of around $60,000 in early February. A week marked by Strategy Inc.’s first sale of Bitcoin since 2022, unprecedented ETF outflows and a further decoupling from record-breaking tech stocks has sapped confidence throughout the sector.

“This week has been painful in crypto. There is really no other way of putting it,” Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered Plc’s head of digital asset research, said in a note.

Traders wrong-footed by the steep selloff have been left nursing large losses. Almost $4 billion of bullish bets have been wiped out since the start of the week, data from CoinGlass show, with Bitcoin leading the way.

Bitcoin went through a six-day stretch of daily losses through Aug. 2 last year, although the declines have been far steeper this week.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin exchange-traded funds — a major source of buying since they launched in early 2024 — have turned into a drag on the market.

Investors have pulled nearly $4.4 billion from US-listed Bitcoin ETFs over the past 13 sessions in a record-long streak of outflows, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The market swoon isn’t confined to Bitcoin. Runner-up token Ether has fallen to its lowest since April 2025, trading around $1,780 at 8:40 a.m. on Thursday. Bitcoin was at around $63,500.

Of critical importance now, according to Kendrick, is what Michael Saylor’s mega-accumulator Strategy does on Monday, when it typically announces Bitcoin purchases. Strategy’s sale of 32 Bitcoin this week was minuscule compared to its $53 billion reserve, but the bearish environment in which it landed dealt a huge blow to confidence.

Kendrick noted that days after its previous sale of Bitcoin in December 2022, Strategy bought more tokens than it had sold. “This time I suspect the buying following the selling will be more aggressive,” or as much as 100 times the number of tokens Strategy divested, Kendrick wrote.

This week’s selloff underscored Bitcoin’s divergence from technology stocks, which hit records even as the token retreated. Bitcoin has lost about half its value since hitting an all-time high above $126,000 last October.

Artificial-intelligence stocks have become the market’s dominant growth trade, retail investors are pouring money into short-dated options and prediction markets, and even within digital assets, stablecoins and so-called perpetual futures are attracting attention that might previously have accrued to Bitcoin.

“Many retail traders expecting to buy the SpaceX IPO or subsequent AI IPOs or financings, are similar profiles to BTC holders,” said Stephane Ouellette, chief executive officer and co-founder of FRNT Financial Inc. “I’d speculate that some of the more extreme weakness today in BTC was pushed by investors trying to raise cash to finance their purchases of, particularly, the SpaceX IPO next week.”

–With assistance from Chloe Cresswell.

(Updates prices.)

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