Bitcoin sinks under $64K as new investors lose faith

• At $64,000, many investors who bought during the latest run-up are already underwater.

The big picture: The original cryptocurrency is being hit from multiple angles. Forced liquidations are again amplifying price swings, while investor sentiment is turning after a year when institutions and retail traders poured billions of dollars into the market.

Between the lines: As of Thursday afternoon, over $1 billion in bitcoin positions had been liquidated on the day as leveraged bets are unwound, according to Coinglass data.

• That's on top of $3 billion in liquidations over the previous eight days, which has triggering a wave of forced selling.
• "Futures markets have entered a forced deleveraging phase, with the largest long liquidation spikes of the drawdown amplifying volatility and downside continuation," Glassnode analysts wrote Wednesday.

As the selling continues, few buyers are emerging to stop the fall. Many of the big buyers who fueled bitcoin's rise last year are now pulling back.

• Money flowing into bitcoin ETFs and corporate balance sheets has slowed, leaving the market without the steady buying support it had in past rallies, Glassnode noted.
• "Institutional demand has reversed materially," CryptoQuant analysts wrote Wednesday. U.S. ETFs, a huge source of new capital into the bitcoin market last year, are net sellers in 2026, they said.

What they're saying: "Crypto is now for normies," Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told Axios.

• As the digital currency got adopted by average investors who started seeing it as a necessary part of their portfolios, its drivers changed.
• Broad investors who wanted to own crypto as a form of diversification lost faith in its benefits as it dipped. Cue these same investors rotating into gold.

Without unvarnished faith in crypto as the future of currency, it is the new investors who didn't have the faith in its use case needed to sustain them through drawdowns.

Zoom out: Thursday's price level is the lowest for bitcoin since 2024, when crypto-convert Donald Trump won a second term in the White House.

Reality check: Long-term holders have grown accustomed to big price swings, part of what many call bitcoin's "four-year cycle." Three previous cycles have seen bitcoin crash roughly 80% from its highs, only to rebound and drive even higher.

• Bitcoin is now off 46% from its all-time high set in October.

What we're watching: Whether the HODL crowd finds a way to drum up enough support for crypto to stop the bleeding.

• And whether Michael Saylor keeps committing to buying the dip.

Editor's note: This article has been updated with the latest data on bitcoin price and liquidations.