Live Markets: Bitcoin crashes to $62,000 as billions of longs get liquidated

Bitcoin (BTC) staged a sharp recovery Wednesday, climbing back to the $64,000 level after an early Asian session sell-off that briefly pushed the cryptocurrency below its 200-week simple moving average at $61,845.

The move fits the profile of a classic oversold bounce. On the daily chart, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) dropped below 30 on Tuesday, a reading that typically signals oversold conditions and often precedes short-term relief rallies. Intraday timeframes showed similar oversold RSI readings when bitcoin slipped below $62,000 earlier in the session.

While the rebound has provided some breathing room for bulls, the broader technical picture remains cautious. Widely followed momentum indicators, including the 50-, 100-, and 200-hour moving averages, continue to trend lower, pointing to an underlying bearish bias in the near term.

It remains to be seen whether this bounce can evolve into a sustained recovery rally or if it will prove to be nothing more than a temporary oversold relief in an ongoing downtrend.

Even as bitcoin fell below $64,000 Thursday morning Hong Kong time and traded down nearly 5% on the day, several narrative-driven tokens continue to catch the eye of investors.

Worldcoin's WLD led major gainers, rising 33% over the past 24 hours and nearly 60% on the week, according to CoinDesk data. Arthur Hayes putting a $10 target on the coin.

In a recent note, Maelstrom, Hayes' family office, argued that Worldcoin could benefit as capital chases scarce public-market proxies for leading AI companies.

The fund pointed to recent enthusiasm around SpaceX's confidential IPO filing and reports that Anthropic is preparing to go public, arguing that Worldcoin's association with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman could make it a liquid proxy for growing investor interest in AI.

Other outperformers included Ethena's ENA, up 17%, and Hyperliquid's HYPE, which gained 4% to extend its weekly advance to more than 25%. Ondo Finance's ONDO also climbed 4.5%, highlighting continued investor interest in tokenized real-world assets.

Panic has crept back into the crypto market, as bitcoin continues its decline to $62,000, spurring demand for options bets that protect against potential price losses below $50,000.In the past 24 hours, the $50,000 strike put expiring on June 26 is the most traded bet on Deribit, the world's largest crypto options exchange by volume. A put option offers insurance against price losses in the underlying asset.This shows that even as bitcoin hovers well above the strike, suggesting traders are either positioning for a significant correction or securing cheap insurance against tail-risk events in the coming weeks.The rest of the leaderboard reinforced a distinctly bearish tilt. Two other puts at strikes of $65,000 and $55,000 also saw notable volume. The only call to crack the top five was the $80,000.

The overwhelming presence of put volume across multiple lower strikes indicates that a notable portion of options flow is betting on, or hedging against, bitcoin failing to sustain its current levels.

Source: CoinDesk