While the cryptocurrency market was going through one of its harshest weeks since July 2024, the risk of a new break in prices came to the fore. While Bitcoin was trading around $62,500, it has fallen more than 14.5 percent since the beginning of the week. Ether fell over 17 percent overall and lost 5.5 percent on Friday alone.
The pressure on Bitcoin and Ether has deepened
Ether, the market’s second largest asset, fell to its lowest level since April 2025. ETH, which reacted at $ 1,420 at that time, headed towards historical peaks in the next four months. It is evaluated that if it falls below this level, the price may approach the regions below $900 in the 2022 bear market.
Selling pressure was not limited to large assets. The broader altcoin market also saw sharp declines. One of the weakest performances of Friday was on the Zcash side. ZEC lost more than 30 percent after a security researcher reported a vulnerability in the sandbox that could lead to unlimited token generation.
Mini dictionary: Vulnerability refers to a security vulnerability that can be exploited in a software or protocol. Sandbox, on the other hand, defines the transfer structure used to increase the confidentiality of transaction information in the Zcash network, the details of which are not visible on the chain.
Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor attributed the weekly decline to the capital rotation after the artificial intelligence IPOs in the USA. Analysts monitoring on-chain data stated that the weak transaction volume in the spot market deepened the sales.
Spot volume and derivatives data point to weak demand
According to CryptoQuant data, spot transaction volume decreased to 679 billion dollars in April. This figure was recorded as the lowest monthly level since October 2023. The data indicated that the buying appetite in the market has weakened.
The situation in the Bitcoin derivatives market has also deteriorated. Open position size fell 15 percent this week to $17 billion. Funding rates returned to the negative to horizontal range on many platforms, indicating that deleveraging was accelerating. On Deribit, the rate fell to minus 15 percent annualized, while the three-month annualized basis fell from 2.9 percent to 2.7 percent.
Defensive positioning came to the fore in the options market. In the last 24 hours, the put and call volume returned to the 50-50 balance, while the one-week 25 delta skew increased from 13 percent to 27 percent. This change revealed that the demand for downside protection has increased significantly. Front-end implied volatility indicator DVOL also rose to 47.
Liquidations reached $1.2 billion
According to Coinglass data, a total of $1.2 billion in liquidations took place in the last 24 hours. 76 percent of this consisted of long positions and 24 percent consisted of short positions. Bitcoin ranked first in nominal liquidation size with $364 million, Ether with $291 million and Zcash with $107 million. Binance liquidation heat map highlighted the $60,900 level as the critical threshold for Bitcoin in a possible new decline.
Losses in ZEC deepened further after BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes announced that his company was selling its entire token allocation. Cardano also fell by more than 10 percent. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of the project, said that he would take a break for a while after drawing attention to the flaws in the ecosystem. A loss of momentum was also seen in artificial intelligence-focused tokens, which were stronger than the market at the beginning of the week. FET, NEAR and TAO fell between 4 percent and 6 percent.
On the other hand, some positive data, albeit limited, was shared for altcoin investors. It was stated that the average relative strength index across crypto parities entered the oversold region. This outlook keeps the possibility of a short-term reaction rise on the agenda over the weekend.
