Bitcoin just erased over $9,000 in a weekend liquidity trap and the Monday recovery is missing one thing
By the time London desks started lighting up this morning, Bitcoin had already moved sharply in off-hours trading.
Over the weekend, while most of the world was off-grid or only half-paying attention between errands and late-night scrolling, BTC slid hard in thin liquidity.
The chart tells the story in a single line: a steady Friday fade that turned into a sharper weekend flush, then a small rebound as global markets came back online.
On Friday, Bitcoin was around $84,274.
By Sunday evening, it had printed its lowest price of the weekend at $74,712, a fall of $9,562, roughly 11.6% from Friday’s starting point.
That’s the part crypto traders know well.
The weekend is when the market can feel like a quiet street, where a single order can move price more than it would during the week.
Order books thin out, fewer big players are actively managing exposure, and moves that might have been absorbed on a weekday can turn into air pockets.
Stops get clipped, leverage gets rinsed, and social feeds fill with the same two emotions: disbelief and certainty.
Then Monday arrives, and the tone changes.
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As European hours got underway, Bitcoin was back around $77,645 this morning, up $2,933, about 3.6%, from the weekend low.
Bitcoin has a pulse.
After a drop that fast, any bounce reads like a market checking whether there are still buyers left. So far, there are.
World markets question the value of risk
Zooming out, the backdrop has been messy.
Traditional markets have been wobbling under a mix of rate expectations, volatility in commodities, and another round of political uncertainty.
Over the past day, the conversation in mainstream finance has been dominated by the fallout from President Trump’s pick of Warsh as the next Fed chair.
The headline has fed into a familiar reflex: price the future as tighter, price the dollar as stronger, price everything else as fragile.
The same theme shows up in broader coverage of the nomination and the knock-on effect across risk assets.
The move is part of a wider crypto slide linked to fears of a more hawkish Fed, with the dollar firming alongside it. That matters for Bitcoin, even when crypto wants to pretend it doesn’t.
When macro traders start reaching for the dollar and trimming risk, Bitcoin often gets treated like the most liquid “sell it now” asset in the room.
That dynamic can be amplified during weekend hours, when the path of least resistance is down.
From early Friday to Monday morning, the dollar index (DXY) is modestly higher, up about 0.66% from roughly 96.44 to 97.08, which tends to go hand in hand with traders playing defence.
Over the same window, S&P 500 futures are lower by about 0.73%, sliding from roughly 6,978 to 6,927, and the low prints came late Sunday, right around the same part of the chart where Bitcoin’s weekend pain peaked.
Commodities are the other tell in your overlay, and they are not signalling comfort yet. Oil is down about 5.04% since Friday, from roughly 65.35 to 62.06, and both gold and silver have been hit harder, gold is off about 13.18% from roughly 5,426 to 4,711, silver is off about 30.61% from roughly 117.79 to 81.73.
Silver and gold have had a small bounce off their late-Sunday low, up about 7% and 5% from the trough, yet oil stays heavy into Monday, and ES futures are still pinned near the lows. Thus, the broader tape on the chart still looks like it’s bracing rather than chasing.
Geopolitical pressure and ETF flows
Still, the human story here is simpler than the macro jargon. It’s the weekend, your phone buzzes, and the price is down again. Maybe you’ve seen this movie before.
Maybe you’ve sworn you’re done with leverage, then you check funding rates anyway.
There were more than $800 million in crypto liquidations in the last 24 hours alone.
You tell yourself you’re just looking, then you’re moving collateral. Then you’re watching a candle print lower and lower, trying to decide whether to act or wait for Monday.
Monday has a way of forcing that decision, because liquidity comes back and narratives sharpen.
This time, the first test is straightforward.
Bitcoin has already bounced off the weekend low, and it has done it right as the week’s real volume and real participants start to return. If the rebound can hold, the market can start building a case that the weekend dump was a classic low-liquidity shakeout.
It looks dramatic on the chart and quietly resets positioning for the next leg. If it can’t, the weekend low stays in play.
The market also risks replaying the same pattern: a flush into thin hours, then another wave of selling when weekday liquidity returns.
Flows also sit in the background as a slow-moving weight on sentiment.
Data tracked by Farside shows U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen persistent net outflows from Jan. 16 through Jan. 30, with a single day of modest net inflows on Jan. 26, resulting in $3.2 billion leaving funds.
This is the worst outflow streak since March 2025, creating persistent directional selling pressure that typically signals a bearish outlook. It reflects a shift in positioning to risk-off and forces traders to reprice liquidity and support levels in real time.
The bigger picture is that the world feels more confrontational and more fragile than it did a couple of years ago.
Markets price that in, sometimes all at once.
The WEF has put “geoeconomic confrontation” and interstate conflict near the top of its risk list for 2026.
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You can feel that tension whenever a political headline hits and everything moves together. For any rally to persist, we'll need a quiet week from US President Donald Trump in particular.
For now, though, Bitcoin’s Monday story is about a weekend dump that took price from $84,274 to $74,712. Then, a small, stubborn rebound back to $77,645 as the week opened.
Traders, investors, and anyone who stayed up too late watching candles are asking the same question they always ask at times like this.
Was that the shakeout, or was that the real start of a cyclical bearish drawdown?
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