Bitcoin dropped below $81,000 for the first time since Sep 21, 2026, and ether fell more than 6%. Smaller tokens fell two to nearly five times as much as bitcoin, and miners with AI ambitions were hit hardest.
For two days, crypto's slide moved alongside rising oil and interest rates. On Thursday afternoon both eased from their highs, and prices kept sliding.
Bitcoin traded at about $80,598 at 1:50 p.m. Eastern, down 3.2% on the day, after touching $80,316. It had not traded below $81,000 since Sep 21, 2026. Ether fell 6.4% to about $2,409, at its low of the day. Solana dropped 9%, XRP 7%, Dogecoin 8.7% and Zcash about 15%.
Bitcoin is now sitting on its 50-day moving average, near $80,280, and is about 36% below its high for the year of $126,296.
The timeline
The sharpest move came in the 11 a.m. hour, when bitcoin fell about 2%, from roughly $82,600 to below $81,000. What set off that hour has not been identified.
At 12:17 p.m., President Trump posted that the U.S. would not attack Iran before the Nov 3, 2026 midterm elections. Oil pared some of its gain and Treasury yields turned lower: the 10-year traded near 5.23% in early afternoon, down about 5 basis points, and the 30-year fell about 5 basis points after a 1 p.m. auction.
Bitcoin did not recover. It closed the 12 p.m. hour near $80,900 and the 1 p.m. hour near $80,630.
Over the morning and early afternoon, hundreds of millions of dollars of leveraged crypto positions were liquidated across exchanges, and liquidations of long bitcoin positions were the largest since early June.
Where the losses landed
Exchange-traded funds and listed crypto companies tracked the tokens. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust fell about 3.5% and its ether fund about 6.2%. Coinbase fell about 3.3% and Strategy about 3.7%.
Bitcoin miners fell further. Cipher Digital and Hut 8 each dropped about 10%, TeraWulf about 8% and Riot Platforms about 11%. Those companies have been building data-center businesses to serve AI customers, and they fell on the same afternoon that a published report questioned OpenAI's revenue run rate and chip stocks slid. Miners without large AI operations, Mara Holdings and CleanSpark, fell about 6% and 9%.
U.S. trading hours
Bitcoin has fallen during U.S. trading hours in eight of the last 13 sessions, and it has been trading at a discount on Coinbase relative to offshore venues. U.S. spot bitcoin funds lost about $485 million on Wednesday, their largest one-day withdrawal since June. Thursday's flow figures are due after the close.
Three readings
One reading is that this is a leverage flush. Smaller tokens fell several times as much as bitcoin, liquidations concentrated in long positions, and selling continued even after the news turned favorable.
A second reading points to the Fed. Governor Christopher Waller said Thursday he expects further rate increases, and long-term Treasury yields reached their highest levels since 2002 this week; an afternoon dip in yields does not change that backdrop for assets that pay no interest.
A third reading links crypto to the broader retreat from AI-exposed assets. The steepest declines were in miners tied to AI data centers, on a day the Nasdaq fell about 1.4%.
Flows and expiry
Thursday's ETF flows will show whether U.S. fund holders added to the selling. Friday's bitcoin and ether options expiry arrives with the price sitting on its 50-day average and about $600 above $80,000. Saturday marks the first anniversary of last year's Oct 10, 2025 liquidation.