Chinese regulators have broadened their crackdown on crypto activities, imposing strict oversight on tokenization and stablecoin issuance in a Friday notice.

“Recently, influenced by various factors, speculative activities related to virtual currencies and the tokenization of real-world assets have occurred frequently, posing new challenges and situations for risk prevention and control,” said the notice, issued jointly by eight national organizations including the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).

The notice reiterates China’s blanket ban on crypto, saying that trading, issuing or facilitating transactions involving digital currencies such as bitcoin BTC$70,780.70, ether ETH$2,058.14, or stablecoins like Tether’s USDT USDT$0.9994 is illegal.

The prohibition extends to foreign entities and individuals offering such services within China. It also bans domestic entities from issuing digital currencies overseas without regulatory approval.

The notice singles out stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat currencies — for special scrutiny. Authorities argue stablecoins replicate key functions of sovereign money and therefore threaten monetary control.

The new rules make clear that no entity, Chinese or foreign, may issue a stablecoin linked to the renminbi abroad without government approval. That includes overseas branches of domestic firms.

The rules also tighten control over tokenization, the fast-growing trend of turning ownership of real-world assets like equities, real estate or funds into digital tokens.

Chinese firms that want to tokenize assets overseas now must obtain approvals or file with regulators, and their financial and tech partners are required to meet heightened compliance standards, the notice said.

China’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies and related activities have been a staple over the past years. The new set of rules build on Chinese authorities in 2021 deeming all crypto-related business activities illegal and prohibiting crypto mining, often called a “China ban.” In 2017, authorities banned Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), labeling them as illegal fundraising and financial fraud, and ordered domestic cryptocurrency exchanges to shutter fiat-to-crypto trading operations.

Read more: China Never Completely Banned Crypto

Friday’s market saw a notable recovery in cryptocurrency prices, with Bitcoin and Litecoin leading the charge. Bitcoin’s bounce from the $60,000 level helped ease fears of a deeper market correction, as it rose nearly 8% to reclaim the $70,000 mark.

This surge also supported riskier altcoins like Litecoin, which is up about 8% for the day.

Why Bitcoin’s rise bodes well for Litecoin

Bitcoin remains the benchmark asset in the crypto space, and when it rallies, traders typically rotate into altcoins like Litecoin. As Bitcoin stabilizes, the risk of forced selling and liquidation cascades decreases, allowing traders to take fresh positions in altcoins.

This is particularly important after Bitcoin touched the $60,074 mark earlier on Friday, a key level that had traders on edge. The rebound reduced margin stress and bolstered sentiment across the market.

Bitcoin’s price recovery also helped offset the concerns raised by figures like Michael Burry, who warned that miners could be forced to sell their Bitcoin holdings if the price dropped below $50,000.

Litecoin’s Friday spike

Litecoin, created in 2011 by Charlie Lee, has seen an uptick in interest as Bitcoin recovers. Known as the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” Litecoin benefits from a long track record and strong exchange support. As of Friday, Litecoin is trading around $54, having hit an intraday high of $56.25.

Shiba Inu follows Bitcoin’s lead

Alongside Litecoin, meme-coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) also gained traction, climbing about 7%.

As Bitcoin recovered from its Thursday slump, large investors redeployed capital across the market, pulling speculative coins like Shiba Inu back into the green.

SHIB, which had faced pressure earlier in the week from market weakness and liquidations, is now benefiting from improved market sentiment.

What’s next for crypto?

Bitcoin’s recovery is giving traders a window to reposition in the market, but caution remains. Analysts suggest that while short-term bounces are possible, broader market trends still point to volatility. Key resistance for Bitcoin sits in the $70,000 to $75,000 range, with some traders speculating on further upward movement.

For now, the surge in Bitcoin’s price is driving positive sentiment in the market, with altcoins like Litecoin and Shiba Inu benefiting from the rebound.

TLDR:

• Bitcoin and Ethereum fall below key technical levels, triggering $1.7B in liquidations. 
• U.S. Treasury confirms it cannot “bail out” Bitcoin or direct banks to increase holdings. 
• Spot ETFs face unrealized losses, but most investor positions remain largely intact. 
• Crypto funding continues selectively with TRM Labs, Flying Tulip, and Prometheum rounds.

Recent analysis covers major shifts in digital assets, including sharp price drops, regulatory actions, and institutional responses affecting market flows and positioning.

Crypto Market Downturn and Institutional Exposure

Bitcoin fell below $65,000, while Ethereum dropped under $1,900, triggering $1.7 billion in liquidations within 24 hours. Most liquidations came from long positions, as leveraged traders exited rapidly across major exchanges.

The market broke key technical levels, with Bitcoin falling under the 50-week moving average. Analysts used historical retracements to estimate downside, with targets ranging from $35,200 to $45,000.

Alex Thorn from Galaxy Digital noted that past cycles showed drops below 50-week moving averages often tested the 200-week level near $58,000.

Meanwhile, the cost basis for many institutional investors remained above current prices.
Strategy Inc.’s average holding cost is around $76,000 per Bitcoin, while JPMorgan estimates mining costs at $87,000.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs are also under pressure, with average entry costs near $84,100 per coin.
Despite a 25% unrealized loss, only a small portion of ETF assets has been withdrawn.

Overall, the market shows lower liquidity, technical weakness, and elevated institutional stress.

ETF inflows slowed, and macro-hedging appeal has reduced, reflecting cautious sentiment.

Regulation, Policy Signals, and Capital Movements

Seized Bitcoin has grown in value from $500 million to over $15 billion, reflecting market gains despite volatility. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified that seized Bitcoin will be retained, but the government cannot “bail out” prices.  

Regulatory attention is shifting to crypto infrastructure, focusing on exchanges, stablecoin corridors, and liquidity hubs.

The Treasury investigates potential sanction evasion, particularly by platforms linked to Iran’s $8–10 billion annual crypto activity.

Meanwhile, the White House hosted discussions with Coinbase, banking groups, and industry representatives on stablecoin rewards. The dialogue explored whether third-party platforms can provide regulated yields to users.

At the same time, state-level enforcement increased, with New York, Nevada, and Connecticut issuing warnings or restraining orders. This divergence reflects the evolving balance between federal guidance and state-level actions.

Capital formation continues cautiously. TRM Labs raised $70 million in Series C funding, while Flying Tulip secured $75.5 million. Prometheum and Penguin Securities also completed rounds, albeit at more conservative valuations.

Despite market stress, selective funding demonstrates ongoing investor interest in blockchain and crypto infrastructure projects. Family offices largely remain sidelined, with 89% holding no crypto exposure, while AI investments show higher interest.

BlackRock’s Bitcoin spot ETF IBIT retains most assets despite AUM retreat from $100 billion to $60 billion. Overall, institutional positioning reflects cautious engagement, regulatory attention, and selective capital deployment.

Bitcoin has bounced roughly 17% from Friday’s $60,150 trough, but the rebound has not erased the undercurrent of caution rippling through the derivatives market. Traders remain wary of chasing fresh upside exposure as the price hovers near the $70,000 level, with liquidity dynamics painting a mixed picture. In the past five sessions, leveraged bullish futures liquidations totaled about $1.8 billion, fueling speculation that major hedge funds or market makers may have faced sizable losses. The market’s struggle to sustain momentum after Thursday’s skid highlights how fragile appetite for risk remains, even as the price attempt to reclaim ground continues.

Key takeaways

• Bitcoin’s derivatives signals point to elevated caution, with the options skew measuring roughly 20% on the week as traders weigh a potential second wave of fund liquidations.

• While the price retraced some of Thursday’s losses, the rally is not translating into broad demand for new long exposure, especially when compared with gold and technology equities.

• Aggregate futures liquidations indicate a recent wave of forced liquidations, but open interest on major venues remains steady, suggesting mixed conviction among bulls and sellers.

• The futures market shows cooling demand for bullish leverage, with the BTC futures basis rate sinking to the lowest in over a year, underscoring a cautious stance despite a price move above key levels.

Tickers mentioned: $BTC

Sentiment: Bearish

Market context: The current dynamics unfold against a backdrop of tepid leverage appetite in crypto markets, with options and futures signals diverging from spot-price gains. Investors are reevaluating risk, liquidity, and potential catalysts that could reaccelerate a broader uptrend, while systemic concerns about market-makers and liquidity have kept participants cautious.

Why it matters

The present mood in the Bitcoin market illustrates a broader tension between price action and risk appetite embedded in derivatives markets. The rally from Friday’s low has been constrained by a thinning of upside demand, suggesting that buyers are selective and selective exposure remains the name of the game. For market participants, the key takeaway is not a lack of interest in Bitcoin per se, but a hesitation to deploy fresh leverage when volatility remains high and liquidity conditions are not uniformly supportive.

The liquidation backdrop underscores how fragile liquidations can ripple through the marketplace. When approximately $1.8 billion of leveraged bullish futures contracts liquidate over a five-day window, it can prompt a reassessment of risk by major players, potentially widening bid-ask spreads and triggering protective selling pressures that outlive the immediate move. This environment makes it harder for bulls to build sustained momentum, even as the price tests and briefly surpasses notable thresholds.

On the sentiment front, the skew in options markets provides a counterpoint to price recovery. A 20% two-month options skew signals persistent fear and a premium placed on downside protection. In calmer times, a higher demand for calls—indicative of optimism—would push the skew down toward neutral readings. Instead, the market appears more attuned to the risk of further losses than to a runaway rally. The lack of a clear catalyst for a renewed surge adds to the sense that any upside may be incremental and exposed to negative surprises if liquidity tightens or macro risk shifts.

Traders will be watching whether institutions that have been operating behind the scenes—market makers, hedge funds, or proprietary desks—adjust their risk models in the near term. The fear of an unseen balance-sheet event can weigh on market psychology, particularly when combined with ongoing questions about systemic leverage in the crypto space. While some bulls have been adding exposure as prices attempt to climb toward and beyond $70,000, the overall tone remains cautious, with the derivatives landscape signaling that risk-off tendencies could reassert themselves if new liquidity concerns or regulatory headlines surface.

The current narrative also invites a closer look at the relationship between price movements and hedging behavior. The apparent dissonance between a late-week price rally and dwindling leverage demand raises questions about what comes next for Bitcoin’s trajectory. If the price can sustain its gains without drawing in a broader wave of leverage, a potential scenario could involve a gradual reaccumulation of long positions. Conversely, any renewed shock—whether from leverage unwind, a regulatory development, or macro catalysts—could accelerate a fresh wave of selling pressure, given the fragile confidence that currently characterizes the market.

The data paints a picture of a market tentatively treading water near critical levels. The aggregated Bitcoin futures open interest across major exchanges stood at roughly 527,850 BTC on Friday, essentially flat versus the prior week, even as the notional value of those contracts declined from about $44.3 billion to $35.8 billion. The juxtaposition—steady open interest with a sharp drop in notional exposure—reflects a snapshot of risk being redistributed rather than a wholesale shift in bullish conviction. It implies that while some traders are choosing to run hedges or reduce exposure, others are still accumulating, albeit cautiously, with a renewed emphasis on margin discipline as prices move in and out of the $70,000 region.

To contextualize whether larger players are reconsidering risk, the BTC futures basis rate—an indicator of the premium paid for futures relative to spot over a set horizon—fell to about 2% on Friday, the lowest in more than a year. In neutral conditions, the annualized premium would typically sit in a 5%–10% range to compensate for the settlement lag. The decline signals a cooling appetite for bullish leverage, even as the price manages to breach the psychological threshold of $70,000. This divergence between price strength and leverage appetite helps explain why the market has yet to embark on a fresh, sustained ascent and why traders remain alert to potential pullbacks if liquidity tightens or risk sentiment worsens.

Options dynamics add another layer of caution. The BTC options market has shown a growing tendency to put protection against downside moves, a hallmark of risk-averse positioning. A prominent feature in the latest readings is the elevated put-call skew, which suggests traders were willing to pay a premium to insure against declines. The skew’s elevation aligns with periods of market stress in which fear and uncertainty dominate price action. While some participants might anticipate a sharper comeback if macro conditions stabilize, the absence of a compelling bullish catalyst leaves room for continued volatility and potential dissipations in sentiment as the market digests new information.

The current mood sits within a broader narrative where fear and uncertainty have grown even without a singular, obvious catalyst. A widely cited discussion—What’s really weighing on Bitcoin? Samson Mow breaks it down—highlights structural concerns in the market’s structure and liquidity dynamics. While there is no single event driving the downturn, the combination of forced liquidations, a fragile risk appetite, and a cautious options market reinforces a narrative of vulnerability that could persist in the near term.

Traders are likely to continue weighing the possibility that a large market maker or hedge fund could be facing distress, and this sentiment tends to erode conviction and raise the odds of downside moves. In such an environment, the probability of a durable bullish breakout remains tempered, even as Bitcoin shows signs of breaking beyond key price levels. As the market digests ongoing data and seeks stability, participants should prepare for continued volatility and carefully monitor leverage, funding dynamics, and macro headlines that could tilt sentiment anew.

Bitcoin BTC$71,168.40 suffered a flash crash to $55,000 on South Korean exchange Bithumb this week after what appears to have been a major internal accounting error.

Bithumb mistakenly credited users with 2,000 BTC each instead of a small reward worth 2,000 Korean won (about $1.50), according to a blog post on Friday.

The result was tens of millions of dollars’ worth of phantom bitcoin appearing in hundreds of user accounts. No bitcoin was moved onchain, and inflated balances existed only in Bithumb’s internal ledger.

Users who suddenly saw enormous balances wasted little time trying to sell, triggering a sharp selloff on Bithumb’s BTC/KRW pair, sending prices 15.8% below other exchanges. At one point, BTC traded at 81 million won ($55,000) while prices elsewhere remained relatively stable.

Bithumb said it identified the abnormal transactions through internal controls and restricted trading in the affected accounts shortly after the incident.

The exchange said prices on its platform normalized within about five minutes and that its liquidation prevention system operated as intended, preventing any cascading forced liquidations linked to the price movement.

The company added that the incident was not related to an external hack or security breach and that customer assets remain secure.

Bitcoin has recently experienced a sharp freefall in the past 48 hours, scaring retail investors and raising serious concerns over its future viability. Though its price has improved slightly on Friday, traders are bracing themselves for the next big dip– and how much worse it might be.

Luckily for the crypto industry, this year wouldn’t be the first time that the future seemed dire. In times like these, history is the best anchor for knowing what happens next, which moves to avoid, and for overall assessing just how bad the situation currently is. Many of these answers lie in the 2022 collapse.

The Conditions That Preceded the 2022 Collapse

Though a lot has changed since then, the 2022 crypto winter provided the backdrop for what most in the community believed would be the end of the industry. 

The narrative began in 2020, when, over the course of a year, cryptocurrencies grew enormously. Funding poured into the market, driving prices sharply higher until they peaked around November 2021. During that time, Bitcoin rose from around $8,300 to $64,000 over 10 months.  

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High-yield products were central to the allure some of the leading crypto firms offered at the time. The idea of receiving a generous, guaranteed interest rate on purchases such as Bitcoin or stablecoins was highly attractive. 

Yet, the narrative began to dismantle, partly due to broader macroeconomic factors. 

The US Federal Reserve had raised interest rates due to persistent inflation, limiting consumers’ access to liquidity. The stock market suffered a deep correction, partially in response to the outbreak of war in Europe.

These factors led crypto investors to withdraw funds from the most speculative assets.

What ensued was a scenario similar to a bank run. But as consumers rushed to withdraw their funds, bigger issues began to appear– ones that caused investors to seriously distrust the industry.

The Domino Effect That Followed

The first shock was the collapse of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin in May 2022, when its price nosedived over 24 hours. The event raised serious distrust in its ability to maintain its dollar peg. 

According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Celsius and Voyager Digital, leading centralized exchanges at the time, saw respective outflows of 20% and 14% in customer funds in the 11 days following the news. 

Then came the collapse of Three Arrows Capital (3AC). At the time, the hedge fund managed about $10 billion in assets. The generalized plunge in crypto prices and a particularly risky trading strategy wiped out its assets, obligating the firm to file for bankruptcy. 

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Centralized exchanges suffered even more greatly, incurring another round of steep outflows. 

After that came the infamous FTX collapse in November 2022. Outflows reached 37% of customer funds, all of which were withdrawn within 48 hours. According to the Chicago Fed, exchanges Genesis and BlockFi respectively withdrew roughly 21% and 12% of their investments in that month alone. 

During 2022, at least 15 crypto-related firms ceased operations or entered insolvency proceedings. The failures revealed structural liquidity weaknesses in several business models, particularly their vulnerability to rapid withdrawals during periods of market stress.

These events underscored an increasingly important lesson: financial promises must be aligned with underlying liquidity, and contingency planning is essential during periods of stress. 

Against today’s market backdrop, those lessons have regained renewed relevance.

Why Today’s Bitcoin Behavior Matters

Over the past week, leading cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum fell nearly 30%. This drop wiped out an estimated $25 billion in unrealized value across digital asset balance sheets. 

This data comes as global markets sold off sharply this week, hitting crypto, equities, and even traditional safe havens like gold and silver. The synchronized decline points to a broader liquidity shock rather than asset-specific weaknesses. 

As a result, traders facing margin calls liquidated their liquid assets first. For crypto, this broader backdrop indicated a market reset rather than a complete loss of confidence. With positive consumer data on Friday reducing near-term macro pressure, Bitcoin saw its price refloat back up to $70,000.

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Nonetheless, Bitcoin’s behavior has signalled something more structural. It hasn’t exclusively reacted to liquidity conditions.

For the past year, Bitcoin has failed to reclaim momentum even on relief rallies. According to previous BeInCrypto analyses, this drawdown is being driven primarily by long-term holders who have consistently sold off their holdings. 

That behavior sends a powerful negative signal into the market. Newer retailers have followed their moves closely, understanding that when conviction hodlers sell, upside attempts lose credibility. 

Price action, however, is often only the first visible layer of stress. While markets tend to price fear quickly, institutions respond more slowly and more structurally, adjusting operations long before a full-blown crisis becomes evident.

In periods of prolonged uncertainty, these strategic shifts can serve as early warning signs.

Institutions Begin Pulling Back Quietly

Beyond price movements, early indicators of stress are already emerging at the institutional level. 

One recent example has been Gemini’s decision to scale back operations and exit certain European markets. The move does not point to insolvency, nor can it be directly attributed to the latest price downturn. 

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However, it does reflect a strategic adjustment to a higher-compliance environment, illustrating how prolonged uncertainty often prompts institutions to reassess regional exposure and operating efficiency before stress becomes visible in balance sheets or market prices.

Meanwhile, last month Polygon carried out a large internal round of layoffs, dismissing roughly 30% of its staff. The move marked the third time it did so in the past three years.