Bitcoin is down roughly 53% in four months, and many are asking why — especially since there hasn’t been one big piece of bad news.
The answer is that today’s Bitcoin market doesn’t work the same way it used to.
In the past, price mostly moved based on people buying and selling real Bitcoin. But now, a huge part of trading happens through derivatives and synthetic products, like:
Futures and perpetual contracts
Options
ETFs
Wrapped BTC and other structured products
These tools let traders bet on Bitcoin’s price without owning actual BTC.
That matters because:
Price can fall even if no one is selling spot Bitcoin
Liquidations of leveraged traders can force selling automatically
One liquidation wave can trigger another, pushing price lower fast
This is why recent drops look sharp but controlled — driven by liquidations and leverage, not panic selling.
On top of that, Bitcoin is being hit by bigger market forces:
Stocks and risk assets are selling off
Global tensions are making investors more cautious
Expectations around future liquidity have changed
Economic data is starting to weaken
When markets go risk-off, crypto usually gets hit the hardest.
Importantly, this doesn’t look like retail panic. It looks like large players reducing exposure, which often keeps price under pressure until things stabilize.
Until leverage clears out and macro conditions improve, bounces can happen — but strong, sustained upside becomes harder.