Oil price spike triggers $547M in crypto liquidations, dragging Bitcoin to $83,440 and Ethereum down 5%

The trigger was oil. A sharp rally in crude prices spooked risk markets broadly, and crypto — where many traders hold leveraged long positions — felt the impact almost immediately. As prices dipped, those positions were automatically liquidated, which pushed prices lower still, triggering more liquidations. The result: more than $547 million in forced selling in 24 hours, one of the larger single-day liquidation events in recent months. Bitcoin fell 3.2% to $83,440, briefly dipping below $84,000 during the worst of the selling. Ethereum's decline was steeper — down 5.4% to $2,570 — partly because of a separate piece of news: Bitmine, a company that had been steadily accumulating ETH as a treasury asset, confirmed it is halting those purchases. Tom Lee, who is associated with the strategy, confirmed the decision publicly. Losing a consistent institutional buyer on a day when the broader market is already under pressure amplified Ethereum's move. DeFi tokens were hit hardest. Uniswap fell more than 10%, Dogecoin dropped 7.2%, and Chainlink and Hyperliquid each lost around 4.6–4.7%. These assets tend to carry more risk in the eyes of traders, so they get sold first when sentiment turns. TRON was a notable exception, falling only 0.4% — its relatively stable price likely reflects its use in stablecoin transfers, which don't depend on market sentiment the way speculative assets do.

• –Robinhood added $25 million in Bitcoin to its corporate balance sheet, joining a growing list of public companies treating BTC as a treasury reserve asset.
• –Abstract, the Ethereum Layer 2 network backed by Pudgy Penguins' parent company Igloo, announced it is shutting down after losing tens of millions of dollars — a reminder that not all L2 projects survive the build-out phase.
• –Crypto trading firm GSR launched a new vault product representing a $100 million commitment to onchain credit markets, a sign that institutional appetite for DeFi lending infrastructure is growing even as token prices fall.