Good morning everybody.
Yesterday was ugly.
Not just for crypto.
Not just for SpaceX.
Pretty much everything.
Stocks were down. Crypto was down. Futures were down. Risk assets got punched in the face across the board. And as I was looking through the charts this morning, I kept coming back to the same question:
What happened?
Because sometimes markets sell off for obvious reasons.
Sometimes there’s a Fed decision.
Sometimes there’s an inflation report.
Sometimes there’s a major geopolitical event.
And then there are days like today where everything starts falling before most people even know why.
Seven Hundred Million Dollars Gets Liquidated
The biggest story in crypto was market structure.
CoinDesk reported roughly $717 million in liquidations as the broader selloff in technology stocks spilled into digital assets.
Bitcoin dropped into the $62,000 range.
Ethereum fell toward $1,650.
Solana got hit hard.
BNB took a beating.
And Hyperliquid dropped below $63.
AI-linked crypto tokens were among the weakest performers. Render, TAO, and several other AI-related projects saw sharp declines as investors moved away from risk.
This wasn’t a crypto-specific event.
This was a risk-off event.
And crypto just happened to be standing in the blast radius.
SpaceX Goes From Mania To Reality
Just a few weeks ago, everybody was talking about SpaceX.
Every conversation felt like the same thing.
“Did you get in?”
“Did you buy the IPO?”
“How high can it go?”
Now we’re having a different conversation.
SpaceX is trading around $150 pre-market after peaking above $200.
That’s a brutal move lower in a very short amount of time.
And what’s interesting is that crypto didn’t benefit.
Normally, you might expect speculative capital leaving one hot asset to flow somewhere else.
Instead, everything got sold.
The broader risk complex simply got hit.
Crypto.
Tech.
Growth stocks.
SpaceX.
Everything.
That’s why I keep saying these markets are far more connected than many people want to admit.
Strategy Remains The Bitcoin Bellwether
Strategy’s preferred stock, STRC, continues weakening.
The stock briefly traded below $84, raising fresh concerns about one of the financing tools Strategy uses to fund its Bitcoin purchases.
Nobody is talking about immediate insolvency risks.
Nobody is talking about a collapse.
But investors are beginning to ask harder questions.
If the preferred stock market weakens, can Strategy continue raising capital at the same pace?
Can the company continue buying Bitcoin at the same rate?
Strategy has become much more than a company that owns Bitcoin.
It’s become the public-market Bitcoin treasury model.
And if confidence in that model starts cracking, the effects could ripple throughout the entire Bitcoin ecosystem.
Congress Keeps Pushing Back Against CBDCs
The Senate passed legislation containing a four-year ban on a Federal Reserve-issued central bank digital currency.
That keeps CBDC opposition front and center in American crypto politics.
The direction continues becoming clearer.
Lawmakers increasingly appear to favor private stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and bank-supervised digital money rather than a retail digital dollar issued directly by the Federal Reserve.
Whether that’s ultimately better remains up for debate.
But the policy trend is becoming difficult to ignore.
Ripple Moves Deeper Into Europe
Ripple secured preliminary MiCA approval through Luxembourg’s financial regulator.
That’s important because MiCA is quickly becoming the gateway for crypto companies looking to operate across the European Union.
While the United States continues wrestling with crypto regulation, Europe is moving forward with a clearer framework.
For Ripple, this approval strengthens its position across European markets and provides another path for expansion regardless of what happens in Washington.
The Quantum Computing Question
One of the more interesting stories involved President Trump signing orders related to quantum computing infrastructure and security.
The goal is straightforward.
Build systems capable of defending against future quantum threats.
For crypto investors, that raises an obvious question.
What happens when quantum computing becomes powerful enough to challenge existing encryption?
Bitcoin.
Ethereum.
Wallet security.
Private keys.
Much of modern digital infrastructure relies on cryptographic assumptions that may eventually need to be upgraded.
We’re probably not there yet.
But what caught my attention is that this conversation is moving from science fiction into actual government policy planning.
And that means the timeline may be shorter than many people assume.
Crypto Prices
Bitcoin (BTC): $61,999
Ethereum (ETH): $1,650
BNB: $571
XRP: $1.09
Solana (SOL): $68.71
Tron (TRX): $0.329
Hyperliquid (HYPE): $62.98
Dogecoin (DOGE): $0.079
Total Crypto Market Cap: $2.1 Trillion
Fear & Greed Index: 19 (Extreme Fear)
RSI: 39 (Oversold)
My Take
The thing that stood out to me this morning wasn’t Bitcoin.
It wasn’t SpaceX.
It wasn’t even crypto.
It was the fact that everything was selling off at the same time.
The Nasdaq futures were down.
The S&P futures were down.
Crypto was down.
SpaceX was down.
And nobody seemed to have a clean explanation.
Maybe it’s Iran.
Maybe it’s geopolitical risk.
Maybe it’s positioning.
Maybe it’s something institutional investors already know that the rest of us won’t find out until later today.
I don’t know.
What I do know is that markets usually don’t move this aggressively without a reason.
And when everything starts falling together, I pay attention.
The other thing I’m watching is SpaceX.
We’re now getting dangerously close to where many IPO investors entered around $135.
The question is simple.
If SpaceX gets back there, do people buy the dip?
Or do they finally decide the easy money has already been made?
We’ll find out soon enough.
And if Craig Cobb is right, and lower lows are still ahead for Bitcoin, there may be a lot more pain before the next real opportunity arrives.
This was an excellent article
Strong recap, Matt. The interesting part is that both SpaceX ($SPCX) and Bitcoin ($BTC) can fall together without sharing the same underlying problem.
SpaceX is dealing with post-IPO price discovery, a thin float, financing concerns, and a valuation that left little room for disappointment. Bitcoin is facing weaker liquidity, ETF pressure, leverage, and spillover from a broader technology sell-off.
My Personal Read: SpaceX may have competed with crypto for attention and speculative capital, but that does not make it the sole cause of Bitcoin’s weakness.
The better framework is capital rotation plus market fragility.
When the hottest stock and the largest digital asset both start losing momentum, the signal is not automatically “buy the dip.” It is to examine positioning, liquidity, and potential catalysts for the next wave of selling.