Bitcoin briefly traded below $62,000 over the weekend, its weakest level in roughly three months, as a wave of ETF redemptions, forced liquidations and a broader retreat from risk assets combined with an unusual drain on crypto liquidity: a record-sized initial public offering from artificial intelligence developer Anthropic.
The largest digital token has shed about 19% in ten days, sliding from $81,000 to just under $62,000. The sell-off accelerated on Saturday, when the crypto market's total value contracted by $330 billion over the week and liquidations reached $2 billion in a single weekend, according to The Kobeissi Letter. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs remained in outflow territory throughout the period.
Strive CEO Matt Cole pointed to a pattern that has played out before. When Elon Musk's SpaceX went public on June 12 and raised $75 billion, Bitcoin fell almost 20% in the 50 days leading up to the listing. Anthropic is now seeking as much as $64.4 billion, which would rank as the second-largest IPO on record behind SpaceX, and investor orders have reportedly reached about six times the shares on offer.
Cole calculated that Bitcoin had dropped roughly 18% over the equivalent 50-day window before Saturday's rout pushed the decline to nearly 25%. The comparison does not end with the drawdown. "From the IPO-day close to Day +100, Bitcoin gained 28%. From the low, it gained 39%," he noted. "The takeaway is that the selling came in the run-up to the listing.
The bottom had effectively happened by the IPO, and the recovery came relatively shortly after, and it came all at once."
Xapo Bank CEO Seamus Rocca offered a similar read on the mechanics. He argued that heavy demand for Anthropic shares may be pulling capital out of crypto, with investors liquidating holdings such as Bitcoin to raise cash for IPO allocations. Large listings, in that view, can exert temporary but sharp selling pressure on digital assets.
Others framed the move as part of a wider de-risking rather than a single-stock story. Mark Connors, chief investment strategist at Risk Dimensions, said the swings were not tied to any one company and reflected a market-wide push to cut exposure. Technology shares have been volatile, with Nvidia in focus, though analysts cautioned against drawing a direct line between the chipmaker's fortunes and Bitcoin's slide.
Sentiment has also been dented by the possibility that Strategy could be removed from MSCI indexes, alongside a build-up in short positions across crypto markets.
Note: Figures as reported by market data cited in the source material.
What would it take to reverse the move? In short, fresh capital. That could mean the Anthropic offering finally absorbing the money investors had set aside for it, ETF redemptions slowing or flipping to inflows, spot demand returning, and macro conditions turning less hostile.
The SpaceX precedent offers a possible road map: a giant listing drains liquidity beforehand, Bitcoin bottoms around the event, and capital then rotates back into liquid markets.
Cole's reading of that template implies Bitcoin could approach $90,000 by late February if history repeats. That is a scenario, not a forecast, and the two periods are not directly comparable given differing market conditions.
For now, the market remains under pressure. Any rebound attempt may prove short-lived unless buyers return in force.
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