Bitcoin tumbled to $68,900 early Friday, sliding below the $70,000 mark to reach its lowest price since August 19 as a surging U.S. dollar and escalating geopolitical tensions triggered a widespread cryptocurrency market sell-off. The leading digital asset’s drop to $68,900 brings its quarterly losses to 18%, erasing much of the gains accumulated over the previous three months.
The sharp downturn rippled across the broader digital asset sector, pulling down major alternative tokens and forcing massive liquidations. Ether fell below $2,000 for the first time since August, while Solana dipped under $80 and XRP hovered near the $1 threshold. Smaller tokens including GT, Stacks, and XMR also suffered steep declines of 7% or more. As prices plunged toward $68,900, crypto exchanges forcibly closed over $1.3 billion in leveraged futures bets within a 24-hour window. According to news reports, Bitcoin accounted for $677 million of those liquidations, with nearly $500 million wiped out the moment it breached the $70,000 support level, including a single $31 million bullish bet on the decentralized platform Hyperliquid.
Macroeconomic pressures and geopolitical instability fueled the retreat from risk-sensitive assets. The U.S. Dollar Index climbed above 103 to hit a 19-month high, driven by a hotter-than-expected October consumer price index report that boosted expectations for a half-percentage-point Federal Reserve interest rate hike in December. Simultaneously, renewed conflict in the Middle East rattled investor sentiment after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reported destroying a U.S. early-warning radar in Bahrain in retaliation for a strike on a telecommunications tower in Sirik, further dampening market appetite for volatile assets.
