From CryptoPotato · By Jordan Lyanchev
The cryptocurrency market is in a knockdown state for over a week now, with bitcoin plunging from $81,000 to just under $65,000 as of Saturday. What’s most surprising is that the latest leg down took place over the weekend, a period known for a lack of major moves – at least over the past few years – especially when there’s no major cathartic event, such as a new war starting somewhere.
Popular analyst Ted Pillows offered an interesting insight into what caused the move.
Blame it on Leverage?
CryptoPotato already explored in great detail the broader market reasons behind BTC’s major collapse from the recent local peak at $81,000. However, they didn’t explain (at least until the last portion) why the asset kept plunging over the weekend. Some users on X argued that a major player (or a group of whales) dumped a significant portion of their holdings, which tanked the market further.
According to Pillows, though, that’s not the case, as there’s no evidence of big sell-offs worth over $50 million. He couldn’t identify any large deposits to exchanges either. In fact, he pointed to Erik Voorhees-linked wallets that kept buying the dip, scooping up almost $100 million worth of ETH in 4 days, while the asset’s price deteriorated to $1,820.
Instead, he blamed it on excessive leverage, as it has been the case in previous similar instances, such as the October 2025 market-wide collapse. Pillows said $200 million was liquidated in a single hour as BTC dipped below $66,000, and the total value jumped to over $500 million on Saturday alone. Naturally, almost all of it was from longs (94%).
“So this is forced selling, not whales dumping,” he concluded.
Stablecoin Trouble
Meanwhile, fellow analyst Crypto Rover pointed to another quickly changing and troubling specter of the current market environment: disappearing liquidity. Citing on-chain data, he noted that the market has lost almost $9 billion worth of stablecoins during the latest leg down (a decrease of around 4.86%), in which BTC dumped by 24%-25%.
For comparison, the stablecoin market cap declined by 3.70 in May this year when BTC tanked by over 30%. During the January bitcoin crash of 38.42%, the same metric shrank by less than 2%.
Bitcoin just experienced its LARGEST stablecoin market cap wipeout of 2026.
January 2026:
Bitcoin crashed 38.42%, while stablecoin market cap dropped just 1.92%.
May 2026:
Bitcoin crashed 30.11%, while stablecoin market cap dropped 3.70%.
October 2026:
Bitcoin crashed only 23.92%, while stablecoin market cap dropped a massive 4.86%.
Nearly $9 BILLION has been wiped from the stablecoin market cap during the latest decline.