Bitcoin rebounds to $81,000 after temporary crash to $78,000 as liquidations approach $2 billion

In a fiery response Friday to MSCI’s ongoing review of MicroStrategy’s index eligibility, executive chairman Michael Saylor rejected the idea that his firm is anything like an investment fund or trust.

“MicroStrategy is not a fund, not a trust, and not a holding company,” Saylor said. “We’re a publicly traded operating company with a $500 million software business and a unique treasury strategy that uses Bitcoin as productive capital.”

The statement follows MSCI’s formal consultation on how to classify so-called digital asset treasury companies (DATs), firms that hold large crypto positions on their balance sheets.

The risk for Saylor: if MSCI reclassifies $MSTR as a passive investment vehicle, it could be booted from key indexes like the MSCI USA and MSCI World. That would force index funds to dump the stock, and the impact could be huge.

Saylor laid out a detailed defense. “This year alone, we’ve completed five public offerings of digital credit securities ($STRK, $STRF, $STRD, $STRC, and $STRE) totaling over $7.7 billion in notional value,” he said. He also highlighted the launch of Stretch ($STRC), a Bitcoin-backed credit instrument offering monthly USD yield to both retail and institutional investors.

“Funds and trusts passively hold assets,” he said. “We create, structure, issue, and operate.”

$MSTR is currently down 70% from its all-time high, as the stock reels from Bitcoin’s collapse and broader pressure on US equities.

But Saylor made clear that MicroStrategy has no plans to change its course. “Index classification doesn’t define us,” he said. “Our strategy is long-term. Our mission is unchanged.”

U.S. stocks turned higher on Friday, clawing back some of the week’s losses. The Dow rose 225 points, or 0.5%, while the S&P 500 added 0.4%. The Nasdaq Composite edged up 0.2%, staging a modest recovery heading into the weekend.

But under the surface, the stress hasn’t gone away. The VIX, Wall Street’s volatility gauge, spiked as much as 19% intraday before settling slightly lower.

Robinhood shares are getting crushed, with the stock down 13.3% this week and off more than 27% in November alone.

After a solid start to the year, the momentum behind the platform’s biggest drivers, crypto and AI stocks, has collapsed, dragging the trading app down with it.

The slide deepened Thursday after the stock dropped 10.1%, before ticking slightly higher Friday morning. But the damage is done.

Traders are pulling back from the risk-on bets that powered Robinhood’s rebound: Bitcoin is off more than 30% from its October peak, and top AI names are down double digits just this week.

Robinhood’s model depends on retail traders chasing volatility, and this week, that chase turned into a retreat. Earlier this year, the company was riding a wave of record Bitcoin volumes and explosive interest in anything AI-related.

John Williams, president of the New York Federal Reserve, said Friday he sees space for the Fed to cut rates soon, arguing that the cooling labor market is now a bigger concern than lingering inflation.

Speaking at an event in Santiago, Chile, Williams made it clear he’s siding with the doves inside the central bank.

“I view monetary policy as being modestly restrictive,” he said. “I still see room for a further adjustment in the near term.”

That means a cut could be on the table in the coming meetings, as the Fed looks to bring its stance closer to what officials see as neutral, neither too tight nor too loose.

Williams’ remarks come as the Fed grows more divided. Some officials are warning that further cuts could fuel price spikes, especially with U.S. import tariffs still elevated.

Others, like Williams, argue the opposite; that policy is still tight enough, and the job market is where the real cracks are showing.

He added that inflation pressures have cooled, and there’s no strong evidence yet that tariffs are causing a new round of price acceleration.

“Downside risks to employment have increased,” Williams said, “while the upside risks to inflation have lessened.”

U.S. government bonds surged this week, with the 10-year Treasury yield dropping nine basis points to 4.05%, locking in its biggest weekly decline since early October.

The 2-year yield also slipped by a similar margin, its biggest drop since September, as risk-off flows lifted demand for safer assets across the board.

That rally came in spite of a steady stream of Fed speakers pushing back on rate cut expectations for December.

Both Austan Goolsbee and Michael Barr emphasized that inflation remains too sticky to justify easing just yet. New York Fed President John Williams is still due to speak later Friday, which could stir fresh moves into the weekend.

Even with that caution, markets leaned toward safety. Equities had their worst week since April, and Friday’s upcoming S&P Global PMIs are expected to show a cooler read on U.S. private sector momentum.

Bond volatility also came roaring back. The ICE BofA MOVE Index jumped to a two-month high midweek after briefly dipping to its lowest level since the 2019 shutdown.

By Friday morning, money markets were pricing in deeper cuts through 2026, helping anchor the Treasury bid. The 2-year yield slid further to 3.51%, as traders held to a 40% chance of a Fed cut next month, according to CME data.

Meanwhile, inflation fears continue to fade. A key 2-year inflation gauge is now headed for its eighth straight weekly decline, the longest stretch since 2014, showing just how quickly markets have detached.

Bitcoin dropped as much as 9% on Coinbase, all the way to $78,422, now heading for its worst monthly showing in three years.

November’s collapse has now erased around 25% of the OG crypto’s value, making it the most brutal single-month drawdown since June 2022, according to Bloomberg data.

Ether fell 7.6%, dipping below $2,700, while smaller altcoins were deep in the red. The move tracked a broader risk-off wave hitting European equities, as macro fears and unwinding leverage collided across asset classes.

This kind of slide hasn’t been seen since the aftermath of the TerraUSD collapse, when Do Kwon’s algorithmic stablecoin blew up in May 2022, setting off a cascade of crypto firm failures. That chain of dominos ultimately ended with Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX implosion later that year.

What makes this month different is the absence of fraud or collapse. Bitcoin surged to an all-time high near $126,000 in early October.

But after $19 billion in leveraged long positions were liquidated on October 10th, the entire market started bleeding. That single move slashed $1.5 trillion from crypto’s total market cap, and the bleeding hasn’t stopped since.

Even with a pro-crypto stance from President Donald Trump and record levels of institutional adoption, prices keep falling. It’s not sentiment. It’s structure. There’s too much leverage and nowhere left to hide.

European natural gas futures trimmed earlier losses on Friday after a key diplomatic setback muddied expectations for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

Futures had hit an 18-month low earlier in the day but bounced after Zelenskiy, alongside Germany’s Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and UK’s Keir Starmer, rejected major elements of a proposed U.S.-brokered deal.

The leaders agreed that Ukraine’s military must remain intact and any talks must start from current front-line positions, a direct blow to Russian demands.

The market took it as a sign that sanctions on Russian gas will likely stay in place for now, preserving supply tightness heading into peak winter demand.

Still, Europe’s reliance on Russian gas has already been slashed to just 10% of total imports, and traders remain focused on LNG flows, which so far look sufficient despite low inventory levels.

In oil markets, both benchmarks extended their weekly decline. Brent crude dipped 0.6% to $62.98, while WTI slipped 0.9% to $58.50 by 1300 GMT. Both are now down more than 2% on the week, reversing last week’s bounce.

A stronger U.S. dollar has also pressured commodities, with the greenback tracking its best week in over a month as traders scale back bets on a near-term Fed rate cut.

European equities fell again Friday, with the Stoxx Europe 600 down 0.5% by midday in London. The drop extended a rough week for risk assets, as traders grappled with tech valuation fatigue, changing Fed rate cut odds, and rising geopolitical stress.

Energy and tech stocks led the retreat, while defensive names, including food, beverage, and personal care, held up better. Siemens Energy slid 7.5%, even after unveiling its largest-ever share buyback. The move looks like classic profit-taking, with investors locking in gains from one of the year’s top performers.

ASML Holding, the heavyweight chip-equipment name that’s done most of the lifting on the index in 2025, fell 5.8%.

The broader Stoxx 600 is now tracking its worst weekly drop since April, falling nearly 4.5% from record highs, as traders question how long the AI spending boom can support elevated valuations.

Eyes also remain on Ukraine, where negotiations to end the war hit another roadblock Friday. European allies backed Zelenskiy in rejecting core parts of the current ceasefire proposal, another source of global uncertainty.

Over in the U.S., the S&P 500’s sharp reversal on Thursday, the biggest since April’s tariff panic, rattled markets, though futures were up 0.3% early Friday, hinting at some late-week stabilization.

There were a few bright spots. Ubisoft jumped 12%, shaking off early losses after better-than-expected net bookings offset concern over a loan covenant breach.

But for the most part, the mood is defensive, and the rally that powered markets into Q4 looks like it’s officially run out of steam.

In the past 15 minutes alone, over $300 million was erased from the crypto market, nearly all of it from long positions that didn’t stand a chance.

Across the last hour, total liquidations hit $504.25 million, with $499.66 million coming from longs. Shorts barely registered at $4.58 million.

Zoom out, and the carnage looks even worse. Over the past 24 hours, a staggering $959.73 million has been liquidated, including $929.16 million in longs, according to on-chain trackers like Coinglass and Binance internal analytics. It’s a full-blown wipeout. Leverage has collapsed across major platforms.

Open interest is down 10.84% to $59.41 billion, showing how fast traders are being ejected. Yet volume is surging, BTC derivatives volume is up 44.06% to $167.64 billion, while options volume is up 57.27% to $10.53 billion. Traders are still in, but the ones left are being more selective… or more reckless.

Long/short ratios are skewed hard to the long side, especially on Binance and OKX. On Binance, the top trader long/short ratio by account is 4.17, and by position, it’s 2.72.

Gold lost ground on Friday, with prices slipping to just above $4,050 an ounce as traders dialed back bets on a Fed rate cut next month. It’s now down 0.7% on the week, heading for its first weekly drop in three.

The pullback followed a U.S. jobs report that showed 119,000 jobs added in September, more than double what economists expected.

That print pushed the odds of a December rate cut down to 40%, according to CME’s FedWatch tool, after sitting closer to 60% just two weeks ago.

Minutes from the Fed’s October meeting, released Wednesday, also showed most officials favor keeping rates steady. That’s usually bad news for gold, which tends to cool off when yields stay high.

Still, the metal is up 55% this year, and if that holds, it would be gold’s best year since 1979. Most of that run came from ETF inflows and central bank buying, but the rally’s been stretched.

The crypto collapse bled straight into Asia’s tech sector Friday morning, as a sector-wide pullback smashed chip stocks from Tokyo to Taipei.

Leading the drop was SoftBank, which plunged more than 10% in Tokyo, even after offloading its Nvidia stake earlier this year.

SoftBank still owns Arm, the British chip firm behind much of Nvidia’s core architecture, and is neck-deep in AI ventures powered by Nvidia’s hardware, including the $500 billion Stargate data center project in the U.S.

Traders dumped anything with Nvidia exposure. SK Hynix, which supplies high-bandwidth memory to Nvidia’s GPUs, dropped nearly 10% in Seoul.

Samsung, another major memory supplier, fell over 5%. In Taiwan, TSMC, which manufactures Nvidia’s most advanced chips, slid more than 4%, while Foxconn, which builds AI server racks, lost 4.86%.

Smaller names got hit just as hard. Tokyo-listed Renesas dropped 3%, Tokyo Electron was down 6.6%, and Lasertec fell 5.2%. All are tightly linked to Nvidia’s supply chain and are now trading like leverage plays on AI sentiment… and right now, that sentiment is cracking.

Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on the Japanese Yen, which is hovering near 157/USD. Officials at Japan’s finance ministry said Friday they may intervene in FX markets if it touches 160. That line in the sand comes just as a $110 billion stimulus plan gets rolled out.

In just five hours on Thursday, the S&P 500 shed over $2 trillion in market value, its fastest wipeout since traders dubbed March’s crash “Liberation Day.”

But the story started with Bitcoin, which plunged through $85,000 for the first time in eight months, dragging the entire risk complex with it. No fresh headlines. No major hacks. Just too much leverage, and it snapped.

Nvidia, which reported record revenue of $55 billion, swung wildly from +6% to -3% by the close. That was all sentiment. No news crossed.

At the same time, crypto liquidations are now pushing $1 billion a day, based on internal figures from OKX and Bybit. What was once just crypto volatility has become a global margin call. And it’s hitting everything.

On October 6th, just 45 days ago, Bitcoin hit a record $126,272, briefly worth $2.5 trillion. Then came the inflection point, October 10th, when Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on China.

That alone triggered a historic $19.2 billion liquidation across leverage-heavy crypto positions. Bitcoin’s bounce never came.

Even after the October 30th trade deal, nothing improved. If anything, the pace of liquidations worsened. Since November 10th, Bitcoin has been locked in a straight-line drop, slicing through support zones while open interest collapsed.

The average daily liquidation now sits just under $1 billion, and no one’s stepping in to catch the knife.