Bitcoin Tumbles Below $65,000 as $3.4 Billion Exits ETFs in a Single Week

The Bitcoin price slipped below the $65,000 mark at the beginning of June 2026, reaching its lowest level since February. According to CoinMarketCap data, the largest cryptocurrency was last trading at around $64,210 — a decline of approximately 3.7 percent on a daily basis and just over 11.5 percent over seven days. At its low point this week, BTC even dropped to around $61,500. This has erased a large portion of the gains the price had built up in May, when it briefly climbed toward $80,000.

The setback is hitting the entire market: red figures dominate across all major coins, and the total value of the crypto market temporarily fell to around $2.18 trillion — close to the lows seen in February. Within just 48 hours, between $1.76 billion and $2.4 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated depending on the data source, the vast majority of them long positions that had bet on rising prices.

A market environment that currently prefers to invest elsewhere

Behind the slump lies not so much a single trigger as a bundle of mutually reinforcing forces. A notable rotation of capital is underway: money that had previously flowed into crypto in search of high returns is currently moving into artificial intelligence stocks, gold, and a series of high-profile IPOs from private tech companies — including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. These IPOs rank among the most anticipated market events of the year, and investors appear to be freeing up liquidity in order to participate. Major bank Citi also recently warned of exactly this structural pull away from crypto.

Added to this is a tense macro environment. Concerns about persistent inflation and delayed interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve, elevated bond yields, and geopolitical risks — including US strikes against Iranian targets at the end of May that dampened risk appetite — have made investors more cautious. An additional burden came on June 4 from a disappointing quarterly report from Broadcom, which put the semiconductor and AI infrastructure sector under pressure and weighed on sentiment in the futures markets.

ETF outflows: the real driving force

The clearest fingerprint is left by the spot Bitcoin ETFs. In a single week at the beginning of June, investors withdrew a net total of around $3.4 billion from US products — the largest weekly outflow since these funds launched in January 2024. The sell-off ended a previously remarkably consistent six-week streak of inflows and reversed the entire sentiment picture into negative territory.

Once again at the center is BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which recorded its worst week ever with around $980 million in outflows; a single dark pool block of $1.26 billion linked to the fund further shook confidence. Grayscale’s high-cost GBTC contributed a disproportionate share of the losses at around $1.2 billion — a typical pattern: investors shed the expensive wrapper first during nervous phases and hold on to the cheaper core positions. The downward trend continued into early June: on June 1, $483.8 million flowed out, with $440.3 million of that from IBIT alone — the eleventh consecutive day of outflows, during which the Bitcoin ETFs collectively lost over four billion dollars. Since the ETFs have become the decisive buyer on the way up in this cycle, they are now acting as an equally powerful seller on the way down.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy: From “never sell” to the first sale in years

Causing particular unease is none other than the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder. Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) confirmed in an SEC filing dated June 1 that it had sold 32 Bitcoin between May 26 and 31 at an average price of around $77,135, generating proceeds of approximately $2.5 million. The quantity is tiny by Strategy’s standards — but the symbolism is enormous: it is the company’s first Bitcoin sale in years, after Saylor had for years promised to buy more “every quarter, forever.” The proceeds will go toward servicing the dividends on the preferred stock STRC.

The unease was amplified by on-chain observations: at the end of May, Strategy transferred around 411.5 Bitcoin (approximately $30.3 million) to Coinbase Prime, fueling speculation about further sales. On the prediction market Polymarket, bets that Strategy would sell Bitcoin before December 31, 2026 temporarily surged to between 84 and 91 percent. The company continues to hold 843,706 BTC worth over $56 billion and emphasizes that the mechanism ultimately serves to buy more Bitcoin in the long run than is sold to cover dividends. Saylor himself recently stoked hopes of new purchases: on June 3, he posted “Back to Work” on X outside his usual rhythm — promptly interpreted by observers as a possible signal of another buy. Nothing has been confirmed; but taken together, the small sale, the drop in the MSTR share price, and the Coinbase transfer are enough in their ambiguity to unsettle the market.

Zcash: A harsh setback after the privacy-coin surge

Zcash (ZEC) has been hit particularly hard, with a daily loss of around 15.8 percent making it one of the weakest performers among the top coins, last trading at around $523. The crash looks especially brutal primarily because ZEC had previously been one of the strongest performers in the entire market: within a month, the price had at times more than doubled, driven by a reinvigorated privacy-coin narrative. Over a seven-day period, the loss is therefore a comparatively moderate just over 1.5 percent, and on a monthly basis ZEC is still up around 54 percent despite the setback.

The current slump is therefore less a fundamental break than the unwinding of an overstretched rally: profit-taking and the liquidation of leveraged long positions are pushing the price down after it had previously been trading near massive resistance zones in the $650 to $700 range. Fundamentally, the story remains intact — the upcoming network upgrade NU7 (“Sapling”) is set to significantly increase the throughput of shielded transactions, Grayscale is exploring the conversion of its Zcash Trust into a spot ETF product, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission closed its investigation in May without taking any action. In the short term, however, the gravitational pull of the broader market dominates; if ZEC falls sustainably below $500, a correction toward $400 to $450 threatens.

Cardano: A five-year low and a crisis of confidence

Frustration runs even deeper with Cardano (ADA). The price fell to around $0.19 — a decline of just over 12 percent on a daily basis and over 18 percent over seven days — marking a level below $0.20 for the first time in more than five years. On a year-to-date basis, ADA has lost around 70 percent and is trading over 93 percent below its all-time high of $3.09 from 2021. Unlike with Zcash, homegrown problems are compounding the general market downturn here.

The trigger for the latest sell-off was a full-blown crisis of confidence in the Cardano ecosystem. Founder Charles Hoskinson warned in a widely noticed video of a “wave of bankruptcies” in the network and subsequently announced briefly on X that he was taking a break. This was preceded by the shutdown of the widely used analytics platform TapTools after four years, as well as the cancellation of the Cardano Summit planned for Singapore in 2026: a request for around 7.8 million ADA (approximately two million dollars) from the treasury narrowly failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority of delegated representatives (DReps), receiving 65.21 percent approval. From a chart-technical perspective, a head-and-shoulders pattern is compounding the situation, with analysts pointing to further downside potential. The market is reading the combination of governance disputes, a shrinking ecosystem, and the founder’s demonstrative break as a signal of weakness — in an environment that has no patience for risk to begin with.