Crypto longs lose $404 million in four hours as bitcoin briefly slips below $80,000

JUST IN: Crypto longs lose $404 million in four hours as Bitcoin briefly slips below $80,000, with spot $BTC ETFs shedding $773 million across Thursday and Friday.

Four hundred and four million dollars in crypto longs wiped out in four hours.

Bitcoin slipped below eighty thousand dollars, and the leveraged traders betting on a bounce paid for it almost instantly. Liquidation engines do not wait for anyone, and on a weekend, with thin order books, the move cut deeper and faster than it would on a Tuesday.

The pressure did not start today. Spot bitcoin ETFs, the products that spent two years hoovering up coins for institutions, shed seven hundred and seventy three million dollars across Thursday and Friday. That is the regulated money walking out the door before the weekend even began, and the ETF buildings on Wall Street were already quiet by the time the leverage unwound.

So the picture this weekend is simple. Institutions pulled nearly eight hundred million in two days, and traders who stayed long anyway lost four hundred million more in four hours.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.