Bitcoin's (BTC) difficult week and worse weekend: Here's what happened and what comes next

Bitcoin experienced a severe drop over the weekend, plunging to near $77,000 and erasing $800 billion in market value since its October peak, pushing it out of the global top 10 assets. This selloff was driven by a 'three-headed monster': geopolitical escalation fears causing a flight to liquidity (selling BTC as an ATM), a broader 'hard money' reset where traditional safe havens like gold and silver also crashed due to a strengthening U.S. Dollar, and a 'liquidation trap' where falling prices triggered massive forced selling of leveraged long positions, totaling nearly $2.5 billion liquidated.

The situation was exacerbated by concerns over Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy (MSTR) stack briefly falling below its entry point, signaling potential future capital raising difficulties. While small investors capitulated, 'mega-whales' quietly accumulated coins. Despite the current panic and parallels to the 2021/2022 crypto winter, the article notes that institutional adoption via ETFs and regulatory progress suggest this cycle is fundamentally different, though a deep correction might be necessary to clear out speculative excesses before the next sustained run.

(Source：CoinDesk)