Name: Crypto market sees broad selloff as volatility rises and liquidity thins
Uploaded: 2025-11-20T03:39:23.120Z
Duration: 2 min 42 s
Description: The crypto market saw widespread losses as rising volatility and shrinking liquidity made digital assets more vulnerable to sharp moves, CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos reports.

The crypto market saw widespread losses as rising volatility and shrinking liquidity made digital assets more vulnerable to sharp moves, CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos reports.

New York

The cryptocurrency market experienced a broad selloff, with major tokens such as Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana posting sharp declines. Crypto-related stocks, including Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), fell significantly as institutional investors withdrew funds, causing liquidity to thin and market volatility to increase.

Market data indicated that BlackRock's iBit spot Bitcoin ETF saw its largest single-day outflow since launch, and overall market depth dropped by 30 percent in the past month. This environment has made the market more sensitive to smaller trades, affecting a wide range of crypto-linked stocks and companies holding large reserves of digital assets, reflecting a broader erosion of confidence across the sector.

Crypto market sees broad selloff as volatility rises and liquidity thins

All right, folks, we also need to get a check on crypto and some crypto-related stocks because it is getting ugly out there. You've got Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, they are all down. A lot of the crypto stocks, MicroStrategy, now known as Strategy, down about 11 percent. Mackenzie Segalos joining us now from San Francisco. Mackenzie, it's been a rough couple of weeks, but today seems particularly bad. Is there anything specific going on? It's really been this perfect storm for crypto, Brian. You've got institutional money leaving, liquidity is thinning, and as a result, confidence is unraveling. So that institutional buyer that had really helped to prop up Bitcoin through spot ETF purchases, they're underwater and they're exiting. BlackRock's iBit, their spot Bitcoin ETF fund, on Tuesday had its largest single-day outflow since it launched. You've got Nansen saying that market depth has fallen 30 percent in the last month, and that combination of higher volatility and shrinking liquidity has really made the digital asset market more sensitive to smaller trades. And that's also dragging down the full spectrum of crypto-linked stocks. You've got Bitcoin miners in the red, and so are the digital asset exchanges like Coinbase, Bullish, and eToro. And then the trade that retail investors have favored recently, the so-called crypto treasury stocks, they are also taking a hit. These are companies that hold large amounts of Bitcoin or Ether on their balance sheets and often trade as proxies for those tokens. That includes Tom Lee's Bitmine Immersion, which is an Ether proxy trade, holds about 3 percent of the world's Ethereum supply. And then you said it, Strategy, Michael Saylor's company, the biggest corporate holder of Bitcoin, both of those names are plunging today. Is it possible? And if it's not, just say it. I don't want to put you on the spot, Mackenzie. But MicroStrategy, Strategy, is effectively, to your point, a Bitcoin repository. They buy Bitcoin. The stock goes up. They buy more Bitcoin. Is it possible the opposite is occurring, where the stock is down because of Bitcoin, but that may be putting pressure on Bitcoin because the stock or the company has to sell Bitcoin? I don't know. It's amazing how much confidence matters in terms of the Bitcoin trade. Strategy is seen as the biggest built-in buyer of Bitcoin, which is a net benefit to the spot market itself. And at this point, usually there's a premium, where if you hold Strategy, it's trading at a premium to the price of Bitcoin, and that's gone away. And so that really speaks to a larger erosion of confidence, which is so much of the crypto trade runs on vibes, whether it's reading the tea leaves of macro moves, what the Fed might do in terms of rate cuts. And so anything viewed as hawkish, and that includes how Strategy is trading, can weigh on the Bitcoin market.

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