Bitcoin’s plunge to nearly $60,000 on Thursday, a nearly 30% drop over 7 days, has got traders on X began floating theories that the selloff was not purely macro or risk-off, but various reasons that contributed to the asset’s worst single-day performance since FTX crashed in 2022.
Flood, a prominent crypto trader, called it in an X post the most vicious selling he’s seen in years and said it felt “forced” and “indiscriminate,” floating possibilities ranging from a sovereign dumping billions to an exchange balance sheet blowup.
Pantera Capital general partner Franklin Bi offered a more detailed theory. He suggested the seller could be a large Asia-based player with limited crypto-native counterparties, meaning the market would not “sniff them out” quickly.
In his view, the chain of events may have started with leverage on Binance, then worsened as carry trades unwound and liquidity evaporated, with a failed attempt to recover losses in gold and silver accelerating the forced unwind this week.
But the more unusual narrative emerging from the crash is not about leverage. It is about security.
Charles Edwards of Capriole argued that falling prices may finally force serious attention on bitcoin’s quantum security risks.
Edwards said he was “serious” when he warned last year that bitcoin might need to go lower to incentivize meaningful action, calling recent developments the first “promising progress” he has seen so far.
Parker White, COO and CIO at DeFi Development Corp., pointed to unusual activity in BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT) as a possible culprit behind Thursday’s washout.
He noted IBIT posted its biggest-ever volume day at $10.7 billion, alongside a record $900 million in options premium, arguing the pattern fits a large options-driven liquidation rather than a typical crypto-native leverage unwind.
“I have no hard evidence here, just some hunches and bread crumbs, but it does seem very plausible,” White wrote on X.
Bitcoin’s drop over the past week has been less about a slow grind lower and more about sudden air pockets, with sharp intraday swings replacing the orderly dip-buying seen earlier this year.
The move has dragged BTC back toward levels last traded in late 2024, while liquidity has looked thin across major venues. With altcoins under heavier pressure and sentiment collapsing to post-FTX style readings, traders are now treating each rebound as suspect until flows and positioning visibly reset.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/02/06/bitcoin-s-crash-to-usd60-000-has-traders-hunting-for-a-hidden-fund-blowup
