Bitcoin slid to $62,000 while Wall Street was shut. Traders now expect it to break $60,000 this year

Bitcoin hit $62,006 on Binance at around 8pm New York time on Saturday, its lowest price since mid-July, after falling about 8% once US stock markets closed on Friday. By early Sunday it had recovered to roughly $64,400, still 15% down on the week and 49% below its October 2025 record.

The crash through $68,000 on 13 November, and the more than $1.5bn of leveraged trades it wiped out, was not the bottom. The selling resumed when the buyers who normally steady the market were absent, and it now has a destination in view. Polymarket traders put the chance of bitcoin falling back to $60,000 before the end of the year at 63% (as of 15 November), up 16 points in a day and from 19% a week ago.

A weekend with no one to catch it

US spot bitcoin funds, the main channel for institutional money, do not trade at weekends. They were already sellers: they shed $1.07bn in the week to 13 November, their second straight week of outflows above $1bn, with redemptions every day. The funds are now down more than $1.5bn for the year, having taken in $21.4bn in 2025.

Options dealers made the fall worse rather than cushioning it. Data from the options platform Greeks.Live showed dealers positioned so that they must sell into falling prices between about $58,000 and $72,000. "To stay hedged in a short-gamma regime, dealers must trade with the prevailing momentum, not against it," said Adam, a macro researcher at the firm. In the 24 hours to early Sunday, more than $750mn of bitcoin positions and about $470mn of ether positions were forcibly closed, roughly four-fifths of them bets on higher prices, according to CoinGlass.

The Fed is doing the damage

Behind the mechanics sits a single driver: money is getting more expensive, and the dollar is getting stronger. A hotter-than-expected October consumer price report pushed rate expectations up. Producer price data from the Labor Department on 13 November did not relieve them: final-demand prices rose 0.3% in October and 6.5% on the year, and the core measure excluding food, energy and trade rose 0.5%.

Fed governors have been explicit. "I am leaning toward supporting an increase in our policy rate of 25 basis points at the FOMC's December meeting," Christopher Waller said in London on 10 November, adding that a half-point rise "should be considered" if inflation kept running hot. Michelle Bowman, the Fed's vice chair for supervision, said the same day she was "seeing signs that inflation pressures are persisting". The dollar index rose above 103 on 13 November, its highest since April 2025.

Traders now treat a December rise as close to settled. They give a quarter-point increase at the 8-9 December meeting 87% and a half-point or more 9.3%. The chance of no change has collapsed to 3.6%, down 18 points in a week.

Two weeks that matter more than the Fed meeting

The most telling number is not the year-end price. Traders put the chance of bitcoin touching $60,000 before November is out at 47%, up from 7.5% a week ago, and a fall to $57,500, below this year's low of $57,800 set on 1 July, at 30%. Set against the 63% for the full year, that means roughly three-quarters of the expected damage is priced to happen in the next fortnight, before the Fed has even acted.

A December rise is already in the price, so the meeting itself may change little. What is still moving bitcoin is the flow: fund redemptions, forced selling and a shrinking pool of stablecoins, the dollar tokens traders use as cash, whose two largest have fallen to a combined $244bn, the lowest since September 2025. Deeper falls look less likely: traders give a drop to $55,000 this year 34%, and to $50,000 15%.

Ether is taking the bigger hit

Ether has fallen 19% in a week to about $1,790, against bitcoin's 15%, and touched $1,711 early on Sunday, its lowest since early July. It is 64% below its August 2025 peak. Traders give it a 37% chance of dropping to $1,500 this year, up from 11% a week ago, though that would need a further fall of about 16% and a new low for 2026.

Why the sellers could be wrong

The case for a floor is serious. The on-chain analyst James Check called the current level a "deep value" zone on Saturday, last visited in February and late June, where patient buyers have historically ended up in profit. Many sellers, he wrote, bought in the $80,000s in September and "are now selling at the very price they wish they had taken advantage of three months ago". With a rise already priced, a softer October PCE inflation report, due before the December meeting, could spark a relief rally; above roughly $73,000, dealer hedging would start to dampen swings.