Bitcoin crashed by 9% in 24 hours

03 Jun 2026 12:36

Economy 2

A number of major cryptocurrencies have risen significantly in price, despite the fact that Bitcoin and Ethereum rates plummeted to multi-month lows.

This is reported by RBC.

On the morning of June 3, the Bitcoin (BTC) rate hit a new low that had held since early April — the price of the leading cryptocurrency dropped below $65,400, losing almost 9% from yesterday's peak. Ethereum quotes fell below $1,815 for the first time since late February, at one point losing almost 10% over the same period.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization plunged below $3.27 trillion, ending up just a few percentage points from the yearly low reached in February (approximately $3.17 trillion).

Notably, many major cryptocurrencies not only did not follow Bitcoin's decline but even rose significantly in price. The top 6 altcoins with the highest gains over the past 24 hours included Lighter (LIT), which surged nearly 20%, DeXE (DEXE) and Ondo Finance (ONDO) with a 15% increase, Zcash (ZEC) and Ethena (ENA) up 12%, as well as NEAR Protocol (NEAR), which added about 10%.

While many altcoins rose without specific news triggers, ONDO and ENA had concrete catalysts preceding the price jumps. The team behind the first project announced the launch of a perpetual futures market on June 9, while the second entered into a partnership with the largest U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase to develop financial instruments. In addition, the American exchange made a large market purchase of ENA.

By 10:40 AM Baku time on June 3, BTC and ETH quotes had recovered slightly and were trading at approximately $67,200 and $1,870 respectively. Meanwhile, the crypto market capitalization rose above $332 trillion.

Amid the volatility over the past 24 hours, crypto exchanges liquidated the positions of 278,000 traders totaling $1.85 billion, according to Coinglass data. Of this amount, more than $1.65 billion came from long positions — those who had bet on price increases. Nearly $1.3 billion in losses were attributed to Bitcoin and Ethereum markets.

This news edited with AI