Bitcoin ended June 30, 2026 at $58,585.96, its lowest close of the year and about 40% below the $96,852.91 it reached on January 14 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). It had climbed back to $84,452.97 by September 23, the day the 10-year US Treasury yield closed at its highest level since 2007, and it slipped further the next morning (source: CoinDesk).
A single day's news usually names one trigger, such as a rate decision, a failed vote in Congress or a hack. The size of the fall that follows depends on something the headline rarely mentions: who is selling, and how much of the market was bought with borrowed money.
The large bitcoin sell-offs of 2025 and 2026 came from a short list of causes, and each one left a trace you can check for free. Once you know where to look, you can tell a crowded trade unwinding from real bad news, and you can judge how exposed your own money is before you act.
Why is bitcoin dropping?
Bitcoin usually drops for three reasons. Large funds sell, traders who borrowed money are forced out of their positions, or news about interest rates or policy makes investors less willing to hold risky assets. In late September 2026, a further dip came as the 10-year US Treasury yield hit 5.11%, its highest since 2007 (source: CoinDesk).
These causes often arrive together. A rate scare makes funds sell, their selling pushes the price down, and the falling price forces leveraged traders to sell as well, which pushes it down further. That chain is why a modest piece of news can end in a large one-day fall.
Bitcoin's 2026 decline followed the same pattern over months. It started from a high that was already well below the record. FRED's highest daily price for bitcoin is $124,720.09, recorded in early October 2025 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). CoinGlass puts the record at about $126,000 (source: CoinGlass 2025 annual report). On September 23 bitcoin was still about 32% below bitcoin's all-time high on that daily measure.
Bitcoin's 2026 price: From the January high to the June low
Bitcoin peaked at $96,852.91 on January 14, 2026, fell about 34% by early February, recovered in spring, then slid to the year's low of $58,585.96 on June 30. From there it rebounded about 44%, to $84,452.97 on September 23, still about 4% below where it started the year (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
These are FRED's daily prices, taken at 5 p.m. Pacific time, so they miss the brief highs and lows inside each day:
Date | Bitcoin price (FRED) | What was happening |
|---|---|---|
December 31, 2025 | $87,696.00 | Year-end, after the fall from the October record |
January 14, 2026 | $96,852.91 | 2026 high |
February 5, 2026 | $63,845.99 | Low of the January-February slide |
May 10, 2026 | $82,103.78 | Spring high |
June 30, 2026 | $58,585.96 | 2026 low, five days after a hot inflation report |
August 21, 2026 | $78,126.63 | Rally after a US Treasury bond-market move |
September 21, 2026 | $86,396.74 | September high, on the largest ETF inflow in nearly a year |
September 23, 2026 | $84,452.97 | Reading on the day the 10-year Treasury yield closed at its highest since 2007 |
How bitcoin reached its January high
Bitcoin gained about 10% between December 31 and January 14 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Two pieces of news that CoinDesk and Yahoo Finance reported that week helped. CoinDesk said a criminal investigation into then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell pushed investors toward assets they saw as safe havens, including gold, silver and bitcoin (source: CoinDesk). Yahoo Finance tied a 3% jump on January 14 to a draft Senate bill setting out rules for the crypto industry (source: Yahoo Finance).
Money was also flowing in, one of the usual reasons why bitcoin goes up. US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which let investors buy bitcoin exposure through an ordinary brokerage account, took in $753.8 million on January 13 and $840.6 million on January 14 (source: Farside Investors).
Why bitcoin fell in January and February
The January high lasted less than a week. On January 20, CoinDesk reported that bitcoin fell below $90,000 during a global sell-off in risky assets. Japan's bond market had slumped, and President Trump had raised new trade threats against the European Union (source: CoinDesk). At the end of the month, analysts at QCP Asia linked a drop below $80,000 to news that Kevin Warsh would become the next Fed chair. They said it set off more than $2.5 billion of liquidations of leveraged long positions (source: Yahoo Finance).
The funds that had bought in January turned into sellers. Between January 16 and February 5, US spot bitcoin ETFs saw net outflows of about $3.9 billion, including $817.8 million on January 29 alone (source: Farside Investors). By February 5 bitcoin had fallen about 34% from its high (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). CNBC reported that the drop came alongside a sharp sell-off in US tech stocks, and data firm CryptoQuant said that "Institutional demand has reversed materially" (source: CNBC).
War, oil and the spring rebound
The spring brought war in the Middle East and a partial recovery. Fortune reported that bitcoin fell about 4% to around $63,000 when the US struck Iran at the end of February, then bounced back to about $69,000 within days (source: Fortune). In April, CoinDesk reported bitcoin jumping to $72,700 after a two-week US-Iran ceasefire was announced (source: CoinDesk, April 8).
Oil prices kept the pressure on. CoinDesk reported Brent crude at $107 in late April as US-Iran talks stalled (source: CoinDesk, April 27). In its April 29 statement, the Federal Reserve said that "Inflation is elevated, in part reflecting the recent increase in global energy prices" (source: Federal Reserve). Bitcoin still reached $82,103.78 on May 10 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). It then faded through the rest of the month, as ETFs saw about $2.4 billion of net outflows in May (source: Farside Investors).
The June slide to the 2026 low
June was the worst month of the year. Bitcoin fell about 20% from May 31 to June 30 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), and US spot bitcoin ETFs saw about $4.5 billion of net outflows during the month (source: Farside Investors). June also had the largest monthly total of forced liquidations in the first half of 2026, at $16.1 billion (source: CoinGlass H1 2026 report).
An inflation report added to the pressure late in the month. On June 25, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the PCE price index was up 4.1% from a year earlier, or 3.4% without food and energy (source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis). The Fed's 2% inflation goal is measured with the PCE price index (source: Federal Reserve). Higher inflation makes rate cuts less likely, and ETFs saw their biggest June outflow that same day, $691.7 million (source: Farside Investors). Bitcoin closed at its 2026 low of $58,585.96 five days later.
How bitcoin recovered in August and September
The recovery started with a move in the bond market. On August 19, the US Treasury said it would at least double the size of its buybacks of long-term government bonds, to at least $4 billion per operation (source: US Treasury). CNBC reported that Treasury yields pulled back sharply after the announcement. A short squeeze then amplified the rally, with roughly $2.7 billion of short positions liquidated, according to CoinGlass (source: CNBC). Bitcoin rose about 21% between August 18 and August 21 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
Mid-September tested the rally with two pieces of bad news in two days. On September 15, the Senate vote to start debate on the CLARITY Act, the main US crypto market-structure bill, fell short of the 60 votes it needed, 49 to 50 (source: US Senate). Bitcoin fell about 3% that day (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), and ETFs saw $450.4 million of outflows (source: Farside Investors). On September 16, the Fed raised its policy rate by a quarter point to 3.75-4.00%, in a 12-0 vote (source: Federal Reserve). The week still ended roughly flat for ETF flows, and on September 21 they took in $999.0 million, the largest daily inflow since October 2025 (source: Farside Investors).
How fund outflows, leverage and interest rates push bitcoin down
Fund outflows, forced selling by leveraged traders and news about interest rates or regulation each reach bitcoin's price through a different channel, and each leaves a public record you can read for free. All three were at work in the large sell-offs of 2025 and 2026, from the October 2025 crash to the June 2026 low:
Cause | How it pushes the price down | Where to check | 2026 example |
|---|---|---|---|
Fund outflows | ETF redemptions lead to bitcoin being sold | Farside ETF flow table | About $4.5 billion out in June (source: Farside Investors) |
Leverage | Liquidations force automatic sales | CoinGlass liquidations | $2.6 billion liquidated on January 31 (source: CoinGlass H1 2026 report) |
Rates and policy news | Investors pull back from risky assets | Fed calendar and inflation release dates | The hot PCE report on June 25 |
Fund flows and bitcoin ETFs
Spot bitcoin ETFs hold real bitcoin for their investors, so large outflows usually mean bitcoin is being sold into the market. When investors pull money out of a fund like the iShares Bitcoin Trust, large brokers called authorized participants redeem blocks of fund shares. The fund then either sells bitcoin for cash or hands bitcoin over to the broker (source: iShares Bitcoin Trust prospectus). Either way, selling pressure reaches the bitcoin market, though not always as a same-day sale by the fund itself.
Farside Investors publishes a free daily table of these flows, fund by fund, in millions of US dollars, with outflows shown in brackets (source: Farside Investors). A single outflow day tells you little. A run of outflow days, like the three weeks from mid-January or most of June 2026, tells you that large buyers have turned into sellers. Crypto ETFs that hold other coins follow a similar structure.
Leverage and liquidations
Leverage means trading with borrowed money, and it turns a small price fall into a large forced sale. On a futures exchange, each position is backed by a slice of the trader's own money called margin. If the price moves against the position far enough to use up that margin, the exchange closes the position automatically, which is a liquidation (source: BloFin Help Center).
Liquidations feed on each other. Each forced sale pushes the price down a little further, which reaches the next group of traders' liquidation prices. On October 10, 2025, President Trump announced 100% tariffs on imports from China, and more than $19 billion of positions were liquidated across the market that day, far more than on any earlier day in CoinGlass's data. About 85-90% of the liquidations were of bets on a rising price (source: CoinGlass 2025 annual report). The Bank for International Settlements said in March 2026 that bitcoin's fall of about 50% from its 2025 highs was "probably exacerbated by liquidations of leveraged long crypto positions" (source: BIS Quarterly Review, March 2026).
Here is how that looks on a single trade. Say you open a long position of 100 contracts on the BTCUSDT Perpetual at $84,000 with 20x leverage in isolated margin mode, where only the margin you assign to the position is at risk. On BloFin one contract is 0.001 BTC, so your position is 0.1 BTC, worth $8,400. At 20x, the margin you put up is one-twentieth of that, $420 (source: BloFin Help Center, margin). A 5% fall in bitcoin, to $79,800, would wipe out that $420. The exchange also keeps a small extra buffer called maintenance margin, so your position would be liquidated a little before that price. Bitcoin fell below $90,000 on January 20, 2026 (source: CoinDesk). That was more than 7% under its January 14 price of $96,852.91, so a 20x long opened at that price would have been liquidated within a week of the 2026 high (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
The same arithmetic applies at any setting of leverage and liquidation: in isolated mode, a fall of about 10% uses up your margin at 10x, and a fall of about 2% does it at 50x. Liquidation heatmaps show where large clusters of other traders' liquidation prices sit.
BloFin offers up to 150x on the BTCUSDT Perpetual, where a fall of less than 1% would use up the margin, and the contract's live price is on the BTCUSDT Perpetual page.
Interest rates, inflation and policy news
Higher interest rates tend to push crypto prices down, because cash and bonds pay more and investors become less willing to hold assets with no yield. Economists at the Bank for International Settlements found that "As monetary policy tightens, crypto prices fall, markets turn bearish", and that US monetary policy shocks move both crypto and traditional markets (source: BIS Working Paper 1219). That is why a hot inflation report, such as the June 25 PCE data, can hit bitcoin before the Fed has done anything.
Regulation news works through the same channel of confidence. The failed CLARITY Act vote on September 15 cut the chances of clear US crypto rules in 2026. Decrypt reported that traders had already priced most of it in, because betting-market odds of the bill becoming law in 2026 had fallen to 17% by that morning (source: Decrypt). The Fed's next meeting is on October 27-28 (source: Federal Reserve FOMC calendar), and each meeting is another test of how Fed rate hikes affect bitcoin.
Other things that can push bitcoin down
Three other causes show up less often but can move the price sharply: hacks, large holders moving or selling coins, and swings in the Japanese yen and the US dollar. Each tends to arrive as a sudden headline, so it helps to know how much weight to give it.
Hacks hit confidence first. On or about February 21, 2025, attackers the FBI linked to North Korea stole about $1.5 billion in crypto from the exchange Bybit. They converted some of it to bitcoin and spread it across thousands of addresses (source: FBI).
A government coin sale can follow a large transfer by months. In 2024, the German state of Saxony sold about 49,858 bitcoin seized in a criminal case. The sales ran from June 19 to July 12 and raised about €2.6 billion, after the coins had been moved on January 16 (source: Saxony state government). The transfer came five months before the sale, and on-chain analysts at Glassnode warn that even a sudden outflow of 10,000 bitcoin from an exchange "can turn out to be simply an internal transfer" (source: Glassnode). Before you react to a "government moves bitcoin" alert, check the wallet on a bitcoin block explorer and look for an exchange deposit. The US holdings behind such alerts are explained in the strategic bitcoin reserve.
Currency moves matter because many investors borrow in cheap currencies to buy riskier assets. When the yen jumped in early August 2024 and that borrowing unwound, bitcoin and ether lost up to 20%, and the BIS said retail traders likely faced margin calls (source: BIS Bulletin 90). In 2026 the pattern was different. Japan's Ministry of Finance bought yen together with the US Treasury on July 31, 2026 (source: Japan Ministry of Finance). A CoinDesk analysis found that bitcoin's recent weakness tracked a strong US dollar more than the yen trade (source: CoinDesk, August 3).
How to check why bitcoin is down today
You can find the most likely cause of a bitcoin drop in about five minutes with free tools. Check whether the whole market is falling, whether funds are selling, whether leveraged traders were forced out, and whether there was scheduled or crypto-specific news.
Work through the checks in order, because the first one tells you whether the problem is crypto at all:
Is it crypto only, or the whole market? Compare bitcoin with the S&P 500 and the US dollar on FRED. If stocks and bitcoin fall together while the dollar rises, the cause is more likely to be economic news than crypto news.
Are funds selling? Open Farside's bitcoin ETF table (source: Farside bitcoin ETF flow table). A large bracketed total, or several in a row, means ETF investors are taking money out.
Were leveraged traders forced out? Open CoinGlass's liquidation page and look at the last 24 hours (source: CoinGlass liquidation data). A large total with most of it in longs points to a leverage flush, which can happen with or without new bad news.
Was there a data release or Fed meeting? Check the Fed's meeting calendar and the release dates for inflation data, the CPI from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the PCE from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (source: Federal Reserve FOMC calendar).
Was there crypto-specific news? Look for a hack, an exchange problem, a vote in Congress or a large wallet transfer, and check any wallet alert on a block explorer before trusting it.
Here is how the checks read on September 15, 2026. Bitcoin fell about 3%, while the S&P 500 slipped only about 0.4%, so the drop looked mostly crypto-specific (source: FRED, S&P 500). ETFs saw $450.4 million of outflows, which pointed to funds selling (source: Farside Investors). The Senate vote on the CLARITY Act failed the same afternoon, which gave a clear crypto-specific reason.
If none of the five shows anything unusual, the drop may simply be normal volatility. Bitcoin can move several percent in a day without a single clear cause, so it pays to have a plan for trading news volatility before the next headline arrives.
What to do when bitcoin drops
A falling price is a risk-management problem before it is a buying or selling decision. Start with anything that uses leverage, because a leveraged position can be closed for you at the worst moment (source: BloFin Help Center). Check how far away your liquidation price is and whether your margin can absorb another large move.
Lower leverage moves your liquidation price further away. A stop-loss is an order that closes your position automatically once the price reaches a level you set in advance, so you pick the exit while you are calm. In a fast fall it can fill at a worse price than the one you set. Both put the exit on your terms rather than the exchange's.
If you hold bitcoin you plan to keep, you can hedge spot crypto with a short futures position instead of selling. A written bear market plan makes it easier to act on rules rather than on fear. None of this is financial advice, and no one can say where the price goes next.
If you would rather follow experienced traders while you learn, BloFin's Futures Copy Trading lets you copy a lead trader's positions and set your own limits on size and risk. Before you start, read about copy trading risk management, because a lead trader's leverage becomes your leverage.
Looking to trade BTC? To get started, create a BloFin account, fund your BloFin account with crypto, and open the BTC/USDT Spot trading page, BTC/USDC Spot trading page, BTCUSDT Perpetual page or BTCUSD Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
Did Tesla sell its bitcoin?
Tesla sold most of its bitcoin in 2022 and still holds the rest. Its filing for the quarter ended June 30, 2022 said it had converted about 75% of its bitcoin purchases into cash (source: Tesla 10-Q, June 2022). Its filing for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 lists 11,509 bitcoin, the same number it held at the end of 2025, so its holdings did not fall during the first half of 2026 (source: Tesla 10-Q, June 2026).
Did the September 2026 rate hike make bitcoin drop?
Bitcoin rose on the day of the hike, because traders had expected it. On September 16, 2026, markets were pricing a 92.5% chance of a rate rise before the Fed's announcement, according to CoinDesk, so the decision itself brought little new information (source: CoinDesk). Bitcoin ended the day about 0.7% higher, at $76,208.64 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Markets tend to move on surprises, which is why a hot inflation report can hurt more than an expected rate decision.
Should I hold or sell bitcoin when it drops?
That depends on your own plan, and no one can tell you where the price goes next. Some holders ride out drops because they bought with money they can leave alone for years, and bitcoin did recover about 44% from its June 30, 2026 low by September 23 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Others cut their holdings because falls of 50% or more have happened before, including the slide from the October 2025 record to that June low. If you trade with leverage, check your liquidation price first, because that decision can be made for you. None of this is financial advice.
Will bitcoin fall to $10,000?
No one can predict bitcoin's price, and BloFin issues no price predictions of its own. What the record shows is that large falls do happen. Bitcoin's 2026 low of $58,585.96 was about 53% below FRED's highest daily price from October 2025 (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). A 2023 Bank for International Settlements working paper studied the gap between crypto futures and spot prices and linked it to two forces (source: BIS Working Paper 1087). Small investors chase leveraged gains in booms, and there is a shortage of traders willing to take the other side. Together with "the involved high leverage", those forces may help explain why severe crashes are "a frequent feature of crypto markets" (source: BIS Working Paper 1087). Sizing positions so that a fall of that scale does not wipe you out matters more than any single price target.
When are the next events that could move bitcoin?
Several scheduled US releases fall between late September and the end of 2026. The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes PCE inflation data on September 30, October 29, November 25 and December 23 (source: Bureau of Economic Analysis). The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes September CPI inflation data on October 14 (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). The Fed meets on October 27-28 and December 8-9, with new economic projections at the December meeting (source: Federal Reserve). Any of them can move rate expectations, and with them the price of bitcoin.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include the Federal Reserve, FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US Treasury, the US Senate, the Bank for International Settlements, the FBI, Japan's Ministry of Finance and SEC filings, alongside Farside Investors, CoinGlass and reporting from CoinDesk, CNBC, Fortune, Decrypt and Yahoo Finance, with prices as of the September 23, 2026 close.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold bitcoin or any other digital asset. Nothing here predicts where bitcoin's price goes next: past moves, including the 2026 decline and recovery, do not tell you what the next one will be. Leveraged products including perpetual futures carry additional risk, because a small move against you can close your position automatically and losses can exceed what you expect, and copy trading passes a lead trader's leverage on to you. Figures are stated as of the dates given and change daily. BloFin services are not available in restricted locations, including the United States. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.