Crypto Market Extends Losses on Bitcoin ‘Exhaustion’ Signals

The crypto market is ending the week on a softer note, with many of the top-20 assets by market cap posting double-digit losses on the week as prices drift lower into Friday.

Bitcoin (BTC) extended its decline today, Sept. 26, now trading at $109,750, down about 1% on the day, while Ethereum (ETH) is flat on the day, having slipped below $4,000 yesterday, according to data from The Defiant’s price page.

Among the top 10 altcoins aside from ETH, only TRON (TRX) is up today, with a modest 1% gain, pushing the price to $0.335. BNB dropped the most among large-caps in the past 24 hours, down 4% to $951, after hitting a new all-time high of $1,079 earlier this week as activity on the chain surges.

Top Gainers and Losers

Solana (SOL) is down 1.8% today and trading at $197, while SOL’s weekly losses now stand at over 18%. Meanwhile, XRP has dropped by 2.4% today, and now is trading at $2.76.

Among the top-100 crypto assets by market capitalization, Plasma’s XPL, which launched alongside the protocol’s mainnet beta yesterday, is by far the biggest gainer today, up 65% over the last 24 hours to trade above $1.20, while the next top-gainer, Mantle’s MNT, is up only 3% on the day.

Among the top losers today, Story (IP) extended its steep sell-off, dropping another 10% on Friday after double-digit losses the day before.

Liquidations, ETFs, and Macro

As Glassnode analysts noted in a Thursday research report, Bitcoin now “shows signs of exhaustion” following a brief rally after the September Federal Reserve meeting, adding that the short-term holder cost basis at $111,000 was the “key level to hold or risk deeper cooling.”

They explained that long-term holders “have already realized 3.4M BTC in profits,” underscoring the heavy distribution and maturity of the rally.

“Unless demand from institutions and holders aligns again, the risk of deeper cooling remains high, highlighting a macro structure that increasingly resembles exhaustion,” the analysts said.

That exhaustion has been compounded by liquidations and crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF) outflows as more than $869 million in leveraged positions were liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass, following Monday’s record-breaking liquidations.

ETH is leading the wipeout at nearly $280 million, followed by BTC at $223 million and XPL at $69 million — with nearly equal amounts of longs and shorts — after an influx of the just-launched asset on centralized exchanges briefly pressured its price to $0.70 yesterday.

Spot ETH ETFs saw net outflows for a fourth straight day, with $251 million leaving on Sept. 25, which is the largest daily outflow since early September, according to SoSoValue. Spot Bitcoin ETFs also posted $258 million in outflows on Thursday, reversing $241 million in net inflows from the previous day.

This investor repositioning comes as new personal-consumption expenditures (PCE) price index PCE data, the Fed’s preferred gauge, was released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Core PCE inflation was 2.9%, in-line with expectations, while the August PCE price index rose 0.3% from last month, and marks a 2.7% increase from last August.

As analysts at Coinbase Institutional noted in a Friday report, this week’s data showed stronger-than-expected growth and steadier labor conditions, with markets now “appear to be pricing the shift: rates edged higher and the DXY approached a three-week high, tightening dollar liquidity at the margin while crypto pulled back.”