Bitcoin Plunges Toward $60,000 Mark. Strategy’s First Sale Triggers Panic, Spot ETFs Suffer Worst Outflows Ever

Tradingkey - On June 5, Bitcoin was nearing the $60,000 threshold. As of press time, it was down 5.24% at $60,463.21, its lowest price since February 6.

[Source: TradingView]

On the news front, the cryptocurrency market has recently been hit by a wave of concentrated selling triggered by a "collapse of conviction."

It is reported that MicroStrategy ( MSTR ), the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has broken its years-long ironclad rule of "only buying and never selling." The company recently sold 32 Bitcoins; though the scale of the trade was negligible, it sparked panic in the market that far exceeded its actual volume.

From a volume perspective, the symbolic significance of this sale far outweighs its actual impact. MicroStrategy sold 32 BTC for approximately $2.5 million, representing just 0.0038% of its total holdings of 843,700 BTC.

The market's real concern is not the sale of these 32 Bitcoins, but the systemic risk exposed behind it. MicroStrategy's average cost of Bitcoin is approximately $75,700 per coin. As prices continue to fall, the company's unrealized book losses have climbed to approximately $10.8 billion. To meet dividend payment obligations on its preferred shares, which carry an annualized dividend rate of roughly 11.5%, the company was forced to sell Bitcoin to bolster liquidity. This marks a shift from its long-standing "unlimited leveraged expansion" strategy to "sustainable leverage management."

There is widespread concern in the market that if prices remain depressed over the long term, these "small exploratory sales" could become normalized operations, potentially triggering a negative feedback loop of "falling stock prices - pressure on leveraged products - forced Bitcoin selling."

Citi analysts noted that spot Bitcoin ETFs have recorded net outflows for several consecutive days, reflecting a significant lack of demand from new investors. At the same time, capital is exiting the cryptocurrency space and moving into AI infrastructure—considered "selling shovels in a gold rush"—including data centers and GPU computing power.

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan stated that Bitcoin ETFs have experienced 12 consecutive trading days of outflows, with total outflows reaching approximately $4 billion, the worst withdrawal streak since their inception. He pointed out that the rotation of funds into AI stocks and popular private market targets like SpaceX is the main reason for the large-scale redemptions in Bitcoin ETFs.