Bitcoin surrendered a weekend burst above $107,000 and was last changing hands near $103,200 in European trade, a $4,000 round-trip that unfolded in less than twelve hours. The leading cryptocurrency printed an intraday high of $107,111 during thin Asian hours before liquidity evaporated and spot markets on Binance and Coinbase slid to $102,000.
The volatility landed on the heels of Moody’s decision late Friday to cut the sovereign credit rating of the United States to Aa1, stripping the world’s largest economy of the last triple-A crown it still retained after downgrades by S&P (2011) and Fitch (2023). Moody’s cited an “uninterrupted rise in debt and interest costs” as the main driver. US 30-year Treasury yields poked above 5% for the first time since April, deepening the risk-off tone across equities and high-beta assets.
Macro anxiety, rather than any crypto-specific headline, explains most of the pull-back, yet derivatives positioning amplified the swing. Coinglass data shows more than $665 million worth of leveraged positions were liquidated on the entire crypto market as perpetual funding flipped sharply positive into the spike and then reversed.
Flows into the ten US spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded funds underline that narrative. As of 29 April — the latest consolidated figure — the ETFs had drawn a cumulative $38.99 billion of net subscriptions and hold roughly 1.14 million BTC after another $591 million day of inflows, according to Farside Investors data.
Until then, the asset appears content to digest the Moody’s shock — and to let macro traders, not crypto die-hards, set the tempo of the next move.
At press time, BTC traded at $102,605.
