Markets plummet at US Open, Bitcoin drops to $85,000, gold also falls
At 9:30 a.m. ET, the tape shifted in a way traders felt in their stomachs. This is the kind of reversal where you stop looking for a clever explanation and start looking at how much margin you actually have.
Bitcoin rolled, then fell, then started moving in clumps. One screen showed the S&P 500 e-mini falling, the dollar strengthening, oil prices soaring, and so-called safety metals taking a hit at the same time. Many understood that all they needed to do was light a few candles and the market would be sold first and accounted for later in the afternoon.
Bitcoin was trading around $84,434 after hitting an intraday low of $84,365 by 11 a.m. ET, down about 5.4% on the day.
On TradingView, the situation looks brutal at first glance, with oil up about 3%, the dollar index up about 0.3%, S&P futures down about 1.1%, Bitcoin down about 4.7%, gold down nearly 5.8%, and silver down more than 6%. Usually anything that told a decent story took on a life of its own.
That’s the point.
This was a “fluidity wins” move, where positioning was more important than narrative, at least initially. Those who participated in Risk all day got their answers in the first hour of the US session.
Rumors are loud, and the market is louder.
Speculation abounds, insiders are leading the strike, someone knows something about Iran, the usual.
There are no verified “attack headlines” to point to here, at least not from major news outlets. The reality is that markets are trading on the risk of escalation behind the scenes, and oil is reacting harshly to it.
Oil movements were the clearest clue, with Brent crude above $71 a barrel as traders focused on rising tensions between the United States and Iran and chokepoint risks around the Strait of Hormuz.
In other words, a confirmed event is not required in order to assess the likelihood of an event in the market. A spike in barrels is a tax on everything else, fueling inflation fears, hurting consumer confidence, roiling interest rates, and making stock investors nervous and potentially making normal declines steeper.
It started with the US Open
Timing is important. 09:30 EST is the open for US spot stocks, the moment when liquidity gets thicker and big flows could actually break through the level.
It’s also when a lot of systematic strategies kick in, and it’s also when the discretionary desk finally has the volume to do what it’s been thinking about all morning. If the market is tilting in one direction, it’s open to testing that tilt.
US technology weaknesses were already on the surface in today’s session. Investors were digesting new concerns around AI infrastructure spending and cloud growth, and Microsoft was at the center of it all.
The Financial Times reported that U.S. tech stocks fell as a surge in Microsoft’s data center spending spooked investors, sending stock prices plummeting and dragging sentiment across the complex.
If stocks are volatile at the start of trading, cryptocurrencies are not sitting politely in another world. Although Bitcoin is traded 24/7, it remains a global risk asset in terms of how it is funded, margined, hedged, and benchmarked. A volatile US Open means cryptocurrencies will be treated as leveraged expressions of the same fear.
Why did Bitcoin fall so quickly?
Bitcoin’s rapid declines usually have a mechanical component, which can be seen in the price movement.
The initial decline tends to come from spot selling and hedging, after which the derivatives market takes over. The stop is hit, the funds are reversed, the open interest is forced down, and the rest is done by liquidation. Selling will not be based on belief, but rather on rules, margin requirements, and enforcement.
If you want to monitor one data point in real time during these movements, the record of liquidations and how they cluster around apparent levels is important.
According to the latest data from Coinglass, over $800 million has been liquidated, with $691 million taken away from longs in the past 24 hours.
This does not tell you why the first domino fell, but rather why the second, third, and tenth domino fell faster than the first.
Selling gold during risk-off feels wrong until you see it happen
Many people will ask the same question. Gold is supposed to be a safe haven, so why did it fall?
The honest answer is that gold moves differently depending on the stage of panic.
In the first stage, the market seeks to raise funds. Sounds simple, but it has consequences. Traders don’t just sell what they want to sell, they sell what they can. Liquid markets are used as ATMs. Since gold is a liquid, it is subject to shock.
The second part is dollars. When the dollar is strong, we often rely on dollar-priced products, at least during the day.
The third part is that gold was already going parabolic. Gold and silver had soared to record highs, but have since fallen sharply due to speculation and a slightly stronger US dollar.
Gold hit a record near $5,602 an ounce before falling towards $5,100.
When assets rise that fast, much of the “safe haven” demand is already priced in. When the music stops, the first job is to reduce risk and clean up leverage. This means selling what is bid.
Even if geopolitical risks persist, gold has the potential to meet people’s expectations for a longer period of time. This is a different timeline than the first hour of risky behavior.
Using the World Gold Council’s estimate of ground supply, the decline from about $5,602 to about $5,100 per ounce would reduce the implied market value of gold from about $38 trillion to $36 trillion, a loss of about $2 trillion, which is the same size as the entire cryptocurrency market capitalization of about $3 trillion.
Simplest reading of tape
To summarize the diagram between assets, it looks like this:
High oil prices, inflation and geopolitical turmoil, stocks sold off at the U.S. Open, the dollar strengthened and leveraged trading came under pressure. Bitcoin, gold, and silver all fell together because the market was deleveraging, not because they suddenly shared the same fundamentals.
This explanation is not as exciting as the “insiders know something” story, but it is consistent with what public reporting and price trends can actually point out.
What to watch next
A few tells are usually important if you’re trying to determine if this is going to be an all-day event or just an annoying flash.
Bitcoin’s reaction after a wave of liquidations is one thing. Once a stable, cleanly broken level begins to be regained, the move is often reconfigured as a stop run. A weak rebound and continued decline suggests that the sell-off has moved from forced to deliberate.
Oil is different. Markets can absorb temporary spikes, but struggle to sustain price increases again. If oil prices continue to rise, risk assets typically continue to feel it.
Then there are the dollars. A strong dollar tends to tighten global liquidity, making it uncomfortable for risk trades financed in dollars.
And of course, pay attention to the headlines. But look at it the right way. There is a lot of noise in the background regarding Iran today, but the markets are already trading on fear. If the confirmed escalation becomes an issue, the move could be extended. Otherwise, the market could start to lose premium and the rebound could be severe.
For now, the most concise way to describe the past 90 minutes is simple. The market is de-risking in real time and everything that was crowded is being tested.
Some assets are already working towards recovery, but their recovery may depend on what happens next in the Middle East.
(Tag translation) Bitcoin
