Bitcoin price has tumbled to its lowest level in months Wednesday night, crashing below $62,000 and wiping out a sharp intraday loss of more than $5,300 — a decline of nearly 8% in 24 hours — as a perfect storm of institutional exodus, leverage liquidations, geopolitical fear, and a symbolic but jarring sale by Michael Saylor’s Strategy converged to shatter market confidence.
At approximately 10:00 PM EDT, Bitcoin price was changing hands at $61,463.22, down from a 24-hour high of $67,416.50 and dangerously close to the psychologically critical $60,000 floor. The selloff erased weeks of tentative recovery and put the world’s largest cryptocurrency nearly 51% below its all-time high of $126,277, set in October 2025.
The catalyst that many analysts believe broke the market’s will was a Monday SEC filing from Strategy revealing that the firm sold 32 Bitcoin between May 26 and May 31, generating approximately $2.5 million at an average price of $77,135 per coin.
While negligible relative to Strategy’s holdings of more than 818,000 BTC, the transaction represented the company’s first disclosed net reduction of its Bitcoin position in years — a jarring break from co-founder Michael Saylor’s long-standing “never sell” doctrine.
The move was intended to fund dividend obligations on its STRC preferred shares, which carry an annual variable dividend of 11.5%. Still, the market reacted viscerally. Bitcoin price immediately fell below $72,000 following the announcement, and Strategy’s own stock dropped nearly 6% the same day.
Today, STRC traded hands around $94.
Bitcoin price craters as BTC ETFs continue outflows
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded an 11-to-12 consecutive day streak of net outflows, the longest run since the products launched, with total withdrawals reaching approximately $3.45 billion across that period. The week ending May 29 alone saw $1.42 billion in net outflows, marking the third-largest weekly withdrawal on record.
For the full month of May, cumulative spot Bitcoin ETF outflows reached $2.30 billion — the worst single month of 2026 — even as Bitcoin’s price only fell 3.69% in that time, suggesting institutions were quietly derisking at a pace far ahead of what price action alone implied.
Beyond crypto-specific factors, Bitcoin price has been whipsawed by a deteriorating macroeconomic backdrop. Escalating U.S.-Iran tensions — including military flare-ups in the Middle East — have driven investors toward safety, triggering a risk-off move that has hammered high-volatility assets across the board.
Adding to the bearish picture is the gravitational pull of the artificial intelligence boom. Capital that might have once flowed into Bitcoin is increasingly chasing AI-linked equities, with the impending IPOs of OpenAI and SpaceX diverting speculative interest.
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