Bitcoin dropped about 3.5% from Thursday afternoon to near $77,860, after touching about $76,300. The first leg came in the hour Amazon and Intel reported. BNB, the coin most tied to Binance, fell further, and about $1.5 billion of leveraged positions were liquidated.
Two separate shocks hit crypto on Thursday night: disappointing results from two of the biggest technology companies, and a multibillion-dollar breach at the largest exchange. The timing of the decline helps separate them.
Bitcoin was at about $80,650 early Thursday afternoon. By about 4:33 a.m. ET on Friday it was near $77,860, down about 3.5%, after falling as low as about $76,325 late Thursday evening.
The timeline
The first leg came between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. ET on Thursday. In that hour bitcoin fell from about $80,740 to about $78,770. Amazon and Intel released their results at the start of that hour, and both fell sharply in extended trading. The first public on-chain flag of unusual Binance outflows appeared at 4:32 p.m., but Binance did not acknowledge a possible security issue until 5:16 p.m.
The second leg came later. The heaviest trading of the night came in the 8 p.m. hour, when bitcoin closed near $77,060, and its low came in the 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. hour, around the time Binance put the estimated impact at $6.3 billion. About $354 million of leveraged positions were liquidated in a single hour around 8:30 p.m., part of about $1.5 billion over 24 hours. Bitcoin recovered to roughly $78,000 to $78,600 overnight.
What the other coins say
The hack's effect shows up most clearly in BNB, the token tied to Binance's ecosystem, which fell about 5.2%. Ether fell about 4.6% to about $2,225, Solana slipped back below $100 to about $97.20, and XRP lost about 2.7%. Bitcoin's 3.5% drop sits between them.
Where bitcoin stands
Bitcoin is down about 11% this year, from $87,497.94 at the end of 2025. It is below its 50-day average of about $81,890 and above its 200-day average of about $73,070. It sits about 3.2% above Strategy's average purchase price of about $75,446, about 1.7% above the $76,540 level Galaxy has called a "tripwire," and about 4.5% below Glassnode's estimate of the average cost of bitcoin held in U.S. spot ETFs, near $81,500.
Bitcoin ETF flows were roughly flat on Thursday, while ether ETFs saw outflows.
About $11 billion of bitcoin options settled on Deribit at 4 a.m. ET Friday.
Tech beta or exchange risk?
The tech-beta view: the first and sharpest move came with the Big Tech results, before Binance confirmed anything, and crypto has been trading alongside the Nasdaq.
The exchange-risk view: the low came as the size of the breach became clear, the coin closest to Binance fell more than bitcoin, and billions of dollars of affected assets that were not frozen could still be sold.
What to watch
Friday's U.S. stock open, Binance's withdrawal restart, any movement of the attacker's bitcoin, Friday's ETF flows, and whether bitcoin holds above Strategy's average cost.