In brief
- Liquidations topped $1.1 billion, most of the them long positions.
- Bitcoin was down 3.6% over the past 24 hours and nearly 7% for the week.
- Glassnode said that crypto markets were showing “signs of exhaustion.”
Major digital coins including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin plunged on Thursday, with liquidations over a 24-hour period topping $1 billion.
Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, was recently down by 3.6% over the past 24 hours, trading for under $109,554, crypto data provider CoinGecko shows. BTC is down nearly 7% for the week.
While Ethereum, the second biggest digital coin, dropped 7% to trade at $3,887 Thursday afternoon New York time.
Other major cryptocurrencies were battered harder, with Dogecoin plunging by 7.6%. The original meme coin and eighth-biggest digital asset was trading close to $0.23.
Solana also sank by 7.7% to $197. 52. Both SOL and DOGE are down about 21% over the last week alone, making them the biggest losers among the top 100 coins by market cap.
The drop in crypto prices came with a dip in the stock market, with the S&P 500, tech-heavy Nasdaq, and Dow Jones Industrial Average all shedding value.
CoinGlass data shows that over $1.1 billion in traders’ positions betting on the future prices of cryptocurrencies had been liquidated. The vast majority of that number—over $1 billion—were long positions.
Glassnode analysts said in a Thursday report that the biggest digital coin was now “showing signs of exhaustion” as long-term holders had taken profits and ETF flows had slowed down.
“Unless demand from institutions and holders aligns again, the risk of deeper cooling remains high, highlighting a macro structure that increasingly resembles exhaustion,” Glassnode said, noting that the current up cycle has already lasted 1,030 days, just short of the roughly 1,060-day span of the past two bull markets.
Those placing bets on Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt‘s parent company, DASTAN, are also feeling bearish: 70% of betters expect BTC will drop to $105,000 before it reaches $125,000.
Bitcoin’s all-time high currently stands at $124,128. It broke that record in August.
Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at crypto asset manager Bitwise, told Decrypt in an interview that crypto was “at the mercy of macro right now.” Leon noted the specter of a U.S. government shutdown that could lead to mass layoffs, rising geopolitical tensions, and a toxic mix of sagging job markets and upwardly revised GDP numbers that could make an interest rate cut less likely.
“Bitcoin and other crypto assets were already hovering in uncertain territory over the last couple of weeks, and so investors were already a little skittish trying to figure out what direction the market is going to take going into Q4,” Leon said. “So I think investors are just bracing into safety, and crypto assets are getting sold down as a result.”
Leon added, however, that he did not believe that crypto prices had topped out, highlighting the enactment of the Genius Act and likely passage of additional crypto friendly legislation and growing institutional interest in digital assets.
“This cycle is fundamentally different than past cycles, and we have to adjust to the new reality,” Leon said. “This is the first cycle where we have regulatory clarity that is just starting. And this is the first cycle that is being driven by institutional adoption instead of retail adoption. As we know, institutional adoption is slower and more spaced out than the retail sort of driven euphoria that we’ve seen in the past.”
Analysts now await Friday’s Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE), a favored measure of the Federal Reserve, which could determine the U.S. central bank’s next move.
An increase in the PCE could lead to a second consecutive interest rate cut in 2025, which could benefit Bitcoin and other risk assets that traditionally respond well to surges of liquidity in markets.
UPDATE (September 25, 2025, 2:49 p.m. ET): Updates headline, liquidation totals and prices, adds Leon and Glassnode quotes.
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