Your Bitcoin Just Gave Back a Weekend Rally — $700M in Bets Got Wiped Before the Fed Speaks
BTC, ETH and XRP all reversed hard on Tuesday as traders braced for the Fed's rate call — here's what the $700M liquidation wipeout means for you.
If you checked your portfolio Tuesday morning and wondered why everything suddenly looked worse than it did over the weekend, you weren’t imagining it. Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP all reversed sharply, wiping out roughly $700 million in leveraged bets in a single day, just as traders brace for the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision.
Bitcoin had spent the weekend holding above $64,000 and pushed as high as $65,600 on Monday, only to get rejected twice at that level. The second rejection was rough, dragging BTC down nearly $3,000 in a matter of hours to $63,000 — its lowest point in ten days.
Why your coins moved together
Ethereum had actually been the star performer just a day earlier, touching a two-month high of $1,980. That gain evaporated fast, with ETH shedding around $100 to fall below $1,900.
XRP wasn’t spared either, dropping 4.5% to $1.06 and slipping under the $1.10 level many traders had been watching as support. Solana fell by a similar percentage, while HYPE dropped 6%. When most of the major coins move down together like this, it’s usually a sign the selling isn’t about any single project — it’s about the whole market pulling back at once.
What “liquidations” actually mean for everyday holders
The scale of the move triggered more than 165,000 liquidations in 24 hours, according to CryptoPotato, citing CoinGlass data. In plain terms, that’s the number of traders who had borrowed money to bet on prices rising further, only to be automatically forced out of their positions when the market turned against them.
If you simply hold BTC, ETH or XRP in a wallet or on an exchange without using leverage, a liquidation cascade doesn’t touch your coins directly — you don’t get “wiped out” the way a leveraged trader can. But it does matter to you indirectly: these cascades can accelerate price drops far beyond what ordinary buying and selling would cause, because each forced sale can trigger the next one down the chain. That’s part of why Bitcoin’s drop from $65,600 to $63,000 happened in hours rather than days.
Why the Fed decision looms so large over crypto
The timing here is the real story. This pullback landed just a day ahead of the Federal Reserve’s scheduled interest rate announcement, and uncertainty over whether rates might move higher has been weighing on “risk-on” assets — the category crypto typically falls into alongside growth stocks. When investors aren’t sure what the Fed will do, many trim risk first and ask questions later.
Analyst CRYPTOWZRD, cited by CryptoPotato, noted that Bitcoin closed the day bearish and flagged $63,000 as a level that now needs to hold. A break below it, in their view, could open the door to fresh local lows.
For everyday holders, the takeaway isn’t panic — it’s context. Sharp, fast moves like this are common around major macro events, and they tend to hit leveraged traders far harder than long-term holders. Still, if $63,000 doesn’t hold for Bitcoin, don’t be surprised if altcoins like XRP and Solana feel it too, given how closely they moved together on the way down.
Read more: Your Bitcoin Is Boxed Between $61K and $67K — Here’s Why the Next 48 Hours Matter
