TL;DR
· In the first two days of June, Bitcoin fell to around $65,500, and the crypto market cap briefly evaporated by about $200 billion.
· Strategy sold 32 BTC for about $2.5 million—based on estimated trading volumes across major exchanges, it’s difficult to explain the crash.
· ETF continuous outflows, Mt.Gox transfers, and the liquidation of leveraged long positions layered on top of each other kept the rebound under pressure from a redistribution of capital.

In early June, Bitcoin briefly dropped below $66,000. It retraced by about 10% within two days. The market quickly pointed the finger at Strategy, led by Michael Saylor, citing the company’s sale of 32 Bitcoins in late May. But in terms of scale, this roughly $2.5 million sell-off is more like noise and cannot explain the evaporation of crypto market capitalization on the order of about $200 billion. What truly drove prices lower was a combination of consecutive redemptions of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, expectations of selling pressure triggered by large Mt.Gox transfers, and the chain reaction after highly leveraged longs were liquidated in a concentrated way. During the same period, AI financing and large-cap technology assets continued to attract risk capital, while crypto assets faced a more concentrated round of deleveraging pressure.

32 BTC Can’t Support a Global Sell-Off

The narrative most likely to spread around this drop is “Saylor sells coins, and the market crashes.” But trading volume doesn’t support that causal chain.

According to The Block and Coindesk, Strategy sold 32 BTC between May 26 and 31, 2026, for about $2.5 million, at an average price of approximately $77,135. For a company that has long been loudly holding Bitcoin, this move is symbolic. However, in terms of market liquidity, the scale is very small.

Bitcoin’s average daily spot trading volume on major exchanges is typically in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars. Roughly calculated at the prevailing price, 32 BTC sold over five trading days represents a tiny fraction of daily spot volume—close to the kind of reduction a large investor might make, rather than sell orders large enough to change the global Bitcoin price.

Volatility in the price itself was much more significant. In early June, Bitcoin first fell by about $4,500 in a single day, then continued to decline during Asian and European trading hours, touching around $65,500 intraday and setting a low not seen since late March. Ethereum also briefly fell below $1,900, and Strategy-related stocks faced simultaneous pressure.

Attributing the drop to 32 BTC is more like the market searching, after the fact, for an easily understood label. The real question is why more capital chose to leave crypto assets at the same time.

ETF Redemptions and Mt.Gox Transfers First Weighed Down Expectations

The first layer of pressure in early June came from spot funding flows.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a rare stretch of consecutive net outflows at the time. Different data methodologies vary slightly, but statistics from multiple media outlets show that by early June, the outflow period had at one point extended to about 13 trading days, with cumulative net outflows of about $4.4 billion, and the total asset size of the related ETFs also fell significantly from previous highs. Ethereum-related products also saw consecutive outflows, indicating that capital wasn’t just withdrawing from one specific product—it was reducing overall exposure to crypto assets.

The second trigger was Mt.Gox.

According to Coindesk, at 04:47 UTC on June 2, the Mt.Gox bankruptcy estate transferred 10,422.65 BTC, worth about $739 million. On-chain data platform Arkham Intelligence flagged the transfer, with about 10,306 BTC going to a wallet address that had not been seen before, and another 116 BTC going to a known Mt.Gox hot wallet. This was the largest transfer from the estate in roughly six and a half months.

These coins did not go directly to an exchange, so it can’t be equated with having already been sold. A more solid interpretation is that wallet consolidation or distribution preparations are underway. But traders usually don’t wait until actual selling occurs to adjust positions. Mt.Gox still holds approximately 34,504 BTC, worth about $2.43 billion, and the distribution deadline has been extended to October 31, 2026. Any large transfer would amplify concerns about potential sell pressure ahead of time.

When ongoing ETF redemptions coincide with Mt.Gox transfers, buy-side support on the Bitcoin spot side is weakened, and the market’s sensitivity to future supply rises rapidly.

AI Funding Wave Exacerbates Capital Diversion Pressure

This sell-off also occurred against another backdrop: AI and large technology companies were absorbing large amounts of risk capital.

On June 1, Alphabet filed with the SEC and planned an equity financing of $80 billion, including a $30 billion underwritten offering, a $40 billion ATM offering, and $10 billion in a private placement to Berkshire Hathaway. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley participated in the underwriting. Berkshire’s existing Alphabet stake was originally worth about $20 billion and would rise to about $30 billion after the transaction.

SpaceX also advanced a large IPO in June. According to Axios, SpaceX priced its offering on June 11, raising $75 billion with a valuation of about $1.77 trillion. AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic have also been facing long-term expectations of large-scale fundraising and listings.

These capital flows can’t be simply written off as a direct cause of Bitcoin’s decline, but they do create internal competition within risk assets. Some institutions expect large tech companies’ AI capital expenditures in 2026 to reach the level of many hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars. In such an environment, incremental capital flows preferentially go to AI, semiconductors, and large-cap tech stocks—meaning crypto assets such as Bitcoin proxy assets, ETH, and SOL face higher pressure from capital diversion.

This also explains the market’s divergence at the time: traditional risk assets and the AI chain still had buy-side interest, while crypto assets were sold and reduced. The market wasn’t fully in risk-off mode; it was reordering different types of risk assets.

Leveraged Longs Turned the Drop into a Stampede

If it were only capital outflows and expectations of sell pressure, Bitcoin might have just experienced a steady, step-by-step decline rather than a sharp drop. The roughly 10% fall over two days in early June hinged on the concentrated triggering of leveraged positions.

According to Coindesk, citing CoinGlass data for the same period, total crypto asset liquidations across the entire market in 24 hours were about $1.84 billion, of which long liquidations were about $1.66 billion and short liquidations about $180 million. About 277,000 traders were liquidated within one day. Long liquidations in Bitcoin alone were close to $900 million, and combined with the liquidation volume from the previous day, it formed the largest deleveraging event since February.

The mechanism isn’t complicated. Spot prices were first pushed lower by funding-side pressure, and the decline triggered insufficient margin for highly leveraged longs in the perpetual contract market. Exchanges automatically liquidated positions, which created additional selling pressure. As prices continued to fall, the next layer of long positions was forced to liquidate, and the stampede expanded accordingly.

That’s why selling 32 BTC isn’t enough to explain the crash, but combined ETF redemptions, Mt.Gox transfers, and leveraged liquidations are enough to magnify a single drop into a sharp sell-off in the short term. Spot pressure provided the direction, while derivatives positions provided the speed.

Technical Signals Start to Approach the Post-Decline Phase, but Selling Pressure May Not Be Over

The sharp sell-off in early June doesn’t necessarily mean Bitcoin has entered a new deep bear phase, nor does it mean a bottom is imminent.

From the price location perspective, Bitcoin at one point moved close to the March candlestick closing low of around $65,771. If the price then breaks below that area, but the weekly RSI doesn’t simultaneously break below the March low, the market could form a bullish divergence of “price makes a new low while momentum fails to make a new low.” A similar structure appeared in the bottom area after the FTX crisis in 2022.

From a cyclical perspective, there’s also a reference point. In previous cycles, major lows roughly occurred in the range of 700+ to 900+ days after the halving. Currently, about 770 days after the April 2024 halving, we are entering a time window in which signals from the later stage of a correction historically tend to appear.

But these only indicate that the decline is entering a more sensitive zone; they don’t directly imply a reversal. Cycle lows are often a process, not a single candlestick. Even if the price finds support near $65,000, it may still be accompanied by sideways movement, repeated dips, and shifting hands among holders.

The most notable aspect of this crash is not that Saylor sold 32 BTC, but that the crypto market triggered concentrated deleveraging under the combined effects of capital diversion, ETF redemptions, potential sell pressure, and highly leveraged positions. As long as capital continues to flow preferentially to AI and large-cap tech assets, even if the crypto market shows a technical rebound, it will still take longer to prove that the sell pressure has been fully absorbed.

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