Bitcoin’s slide to $61,300 exposed a leveraged crypto market under pressure

Bitcoin fell to approximately $61,300 on June 4, 2026, before recovering to about $62,500 by 7:02 a.m. Eastern, according to a contemporaneous CoinDesk Data snapshot. The decline carried the largest cryptocurrency below $63,000 for the first time since February and extended a selloff that had already forced leveraged positions out of the market.

CoinDesk reported approximately $3 billion in cryptocurrency derivatives liquidations over the two days ending on June 4. That estimate described positions forcibly closed by trading venues after collateral became insufficient; it did not mean that $3 billion in spot cryptocurrency disappeared or changed hands at one price.

The episode mattered because spot selling, exchange-traded-fund withdrawals and derivatives leverage were reinforcing one another. Bitcoin’s rebound from the intraday low showed that buyers remained near the low-$60,000 range, but the forced deleveraging demonstrated how quickly a price decline could accelerate when leveraged traders were concentrated on the same side of the market.

What the price record establishes

Bitcoin trades continuously across multiple venues, so it has no universal daily open, close or official consolidated low. The approximately $61,300 low and $62,500 recovery are timestamped CoinDesk Data observations, not a claim about every exchange or the final value for the June 4 UTC session.

Coinbase Exchange’s BTC-USD candles provide a separate venue-level record, with the relevant reproducible window running from 00:00 UTC on June 4 through 00:00 UTC on June 5. A Coinbase candle can differ from an index or another exchange because it includes only trades executed in that venue’s BTC-USD market. Accordingly, the most defensible conclusion is that bitcoin traded into the low $61,000s—not that one price represented the entire global market.

The move also affected the broader market. Contemporaneous reporting described losses in ether and other large-cap crypto assets as leverage was reduced. That synchronization supports the interpretation that June 4 was a market-wide risk event rather than a problem isolated to Bitcoin’s protocol.

ETF withdrawals reduced a source of demand

Farside Investors recorded net withdrawals of $483.8 million from U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds on June 1, $519.1 million on June 2 and $396.6 million on June 3. Added together, those published estimates equal $1.3995 billion of net outflows across the three U.S. trading sessions preceding the June 4 selloff.

That calculation is Coinburn’s arithmetic using Farside’s fund-by-fund table. It establishes that an important regulated access channel was experiencing net redemptions before bitcoin reached $61,300. It does not prove that ETF activity alone caused the decline: crypto markets also respond to offshore trading, options positioning, macroeconomic conditions, treasury-company transactions and changes in available leverage.

Farside subsequently recorded a small $3.2 million net inflow for the June 4 U.S. session. Because that figure reflects the completed trading day, it should not be projected backward as information available during the early-morning price low.

Leverage amplified the decline

Liquidation totals are estimates compiled from the exchanges visible to a data provider. They can vary with the provider’s venue coverage, reporting latency and rolling 24-hour or multi-day cutoff. The approximately $3 billion figure is therefore best read as evidence of the event’s scale, not an audited universal total.

The sequence was nevertheless clear on June 4: bitcoin’s price weakened, long positions lost collateral value, exchanges closed under-margined positions, and those closures added market sell orders. The resulting rebound did not establish a durable bottom. It established only that the market found enough near-term demand to move back above the reported low after a severe leverage flush.