Why Is Crypto Falling? Who Is Selling, and Why Now

Compiled from public data and news reports as of 15 November 2026. Facts and context, not investment advice and not a forecast.

⚡ In short

• Bitcoin is about 47% below its October 2025 record, Ether about 62% and Solana about 74%. By the usual definition (20%+ below a high) that is bear-market territory.
• No single seller is behind it. Several groups are selling at once: investors pulling money out of Bitcoin ETFs, leveraged traders whose bets were closed automatically, and mid-sized holders.
• The main pressure comes from outside crypto: inflation is rising again, markets now expect the Federal Reserve to raise rates in December, the 10-year US Treasury yields 5.1% and the dollar is strong.
• Money is leaving crypto: the supply of stablecoins - the "cash" parked inside crypto - shrank by about $16 billion in 30 days.

📉 The numbers

Over the weekend several outlets reported Bitcoin briefly near $62,000. It is heading for its sixth weekly loss in a row.

Charts by TradingView.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Who is selling?

1. Bitcoin ETF investors. US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw roughly $1.9 billion of net withdrawals over seven trading sessions (5-13 November), according to Farside data cited by crypto.news. BlackRock's fund recorded 11 days of outflows in a row. ETFs were the biggest new buyers in 2024-25 - now they are net sellers.

2. Leveraged traders - not by choice. On 13 November about $1.4 billion of crypto derivatives positions were liquidated in 24 hours, and around 89% of them were bets on rising prices (CryptoTimes). When a leveraged position runs out of margin, the exchange sells it automatically. Each forced sale pushes the price lower and can trigger the next one.

3. Mid-sized holders. On-chain data from CryptoQuant shows wallets holding 100-1,000 BTC sold about 50,500 BTC during the fall, and small wallets about 14,400 BTC, while the largest wallets (1,000+ BTC) added about 47,000 BTC (KuCoin). Another analyst reports the opposite for the largest holders - a drop of 34,000 BTC (ZyCrypto). Wallet data is hard to read: coins moving between wallets or custodians are not always sales.

4. Long-term holders - earlier. According to Glassnode data quoted by 21Shares, long-term holders reduced their balances by about 248,000 BTC in the third quarter - selling into the market before the latest leg down.

5. Companies holding Bitcoin - mostly not selling. We found no reports of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) selling. Metaplanet sold 10,000 BTC in Q3 and bought 11,000 back to show rating agencies it could raise cash (Yahoo Finance); it has since reported a loss and is being removed from an MSCI index (crypto.news). These companies were a steady source of buying in 2025; that demand has slowed.

🏦 Why now? The pressure from outside crypto

• Inflation is back above 4%. US consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, more than the 0.3% expected. Over 12 months inflation is 4.1%, up from 3.0% a year earlier (BLS via FRED).
• The Fed is expected to raise rates, not cut them. Futures markets priced roughly an 88% chance of a quarter-point hike at the 9 December meeting and some chance of a half-point move (Cointelegraph, CNBC). Bank of America now expects hikes in December, January and March (Crypto Briefing).
• Safe assets pay more. The 10-year Treasury yields 5.10%, a year ago about 4.1%. When a government bond pays 5%, assets with no yield, like Bitcoin, look less attractive to many investors - and borrowing to buy crypto costs more.
• A strong dollar. Higher US rate expectations have lifted the dollar, which has often coincided with weaker crypto prices.
• Tech stocks and a giant IPO. A sell-off in AI-related stocks and the upcoming Anthropic IPO (up to about $64 billion, expected around 19 November) are cited by some as pulling money from risky assets (CoinDesk). Others argue the effect is smaller than it looks (Decrypt). It is a widely discussed, but unproven, factor.

🐻 Is this a bear market?

By the common shorthand - a fall of 20% or more from a high - yes: Bitcoin is about 47% below its record. In earlier crypto bear markets (2018 and 2022) Bitcoin fell roughly 75-85% from its peak before recovering; whether anything similar happens this time is unknown. Nobody can reliably tell where a bottom is.

👀 What to watch next

We track these every day in the Market Pulse and Crypto Money-Flow Radar sections of our daily report.

Sources: our own data from CoinGecko, DefiLlama, alternative.me and FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis); news reports linked above. Figures from different outlets vary and should be treated as approximate. This article is information only and not investment advice.