Bitcoin Slips Toward $70K, Strategy Sells 32 BTC, $80M Polymarket Bet in Dispute

Bitcoin News

Bitcoin slid toward the $70,000 mark late Monday as escalating tensions between the United States and Iran sapped appetite for risk assets. BTC fell 4.2% over 24 hours to $70,587, while broader majors followed the move lower — Ethereum dipped 1.1% to $1,986, BNB shed 2.4%, XRP slipped 3.8%, and Solana lost 2.8%. Analysts framed the move as a textbook risk-off rotation driven by Strait of Hormuz instability fears, with investors trimming high-beta exposure across both equities and crypto. The dollar bid strengthened as traders sought safety, leaving high-momentum assets like Bitcoin vulnerable to further compression in the near term.

Compounding the macro pressure, Strategy disclosed in a securities filing that it offloaded 32 BTC between May 26 and May 31 at an average price of $77,135 per coin — roughly $2.5 million in proceeds. While modest in size, the transaction marked the company's first Bitcoin sale since December 2022, breaking a long-standing public commitment never to liquidate its treasury. Management said proceeds would fund distributions on preferred stock. Industry observers stressed the optics: when one of the largest corporate BTC holders begins trimming, the symbolic weight far exceeds the dollar amount, planting fresh doubts in retail confidence at an already fragile point in the cycle.

The disclosure simultaneously ignited a fierce dispute on Polymarket, where more than $80 million had been wagered on whether Strategy would sell any Bitcoin before May 31. Because the company published its filing on June 1, the market initially resolved to "No," with odds for the "Yes" side collapsing to less than one cent. Frustrated bettors flooded the platform's comment threads, arguing that the underlying transaction undeniably occurred inside the May window. Polymarket countered that confirmation must arrive within the market timeframe to qualify, signaling a second adjudication on Wednesday that could clear the order book entirely if no statement emerges.

Despite spot selling, positioning in the derivatives market told a more nuanced story. The long-to-short ratio among top traders at the Binance exchange jumped to 1.4x from 1.1x a week earlier, with institutional accounts steadily accumulating leveraged longs since BTC broke below $76,500. Over at OKX, top traders initially leaned bearish through the weekend before flipping aggressively on Monday, pushing their long-to-short ratio to 1.9x. The shift suggests larger market participants treated the dip as an opportunity rather than a structural top, though sizing remains the critical question heading into the next weekly close.

Aggregate open interest across major venues remained sticky at $43.5 billion, essentially flat versus the prior week, indicating that the cascade of forced liquidations did not trigger panic position unwinds. The annualized perpetual funding rate climbed above the neutral 6%-to-12% corridor for the first time in over six months, reaching roughly 13%. That elevated reading underscores genuine bullish conviction among leveraged accounts, but it also primes the order book for cascading liquidations should price slip below the immediate support cluster. Funding nearing the upper bound historically precedes either a sharp reset or a powerful trend continuation.

The 24-hour stretch through Monday delivered $276 million in liquidated leveraged long positions as BTC pierced $71,000 for the first time in seven weeks. Compounding the leverage stress, USDT traded at a slight discount on major spot venues, a tell-tale signature of capital rotating out of crypto and back into fiat. That outflow dynamic mirrors broader sentiment, with the Nasdaq Composite still managing a 0.5% gain on Monday — a divergence highlighting that current weakness is idiosyncratic rather than purely macro. Until USDT regains a premium, near-term rebounds and ETF inflows may struggle to gain traction.

BTC trades at $70,775 with a 24-hour decline of 3.84%, sitting just above first support at $70,211. The RSI prints 29.32, deep in oversold territory, while the daily MACD remains bearish — a classic mid-correction candlestick structure. Bulls need a daily close above $71,475 to neutralize momentum, with a reclaim of $72,762 required to invalidate the active downtrend. A breakdown below $68,999 exposes $66,862 and risks confirming a broader bear-market leg. The thesis hinges on whether oversold conditions trigger mean reversion before macro stress overwhelms institutional bids.