Bitcoin futures tumbled Thursday to as low as $58,995, the lowest price since October 2024, bringing its drawdown from last year’s high to about 52 percent. The biggest cryptocurrency has been battling with the $60,000 level all year – first in February, where it found support, then again the first two weeks of June, before a pop to over $67,000.

Options traders are treating this break like it could be the tip of an iceberg. 

The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) traded just shy of 1.1 million options Thursday, almost double the average the past thirty days, according to Cboe LiveVol data. Put volume more than doubled calls. Traders bought 275,000 puts, compared to just under 129,000 calls, according to data from ThinkOrSwim.

Of the $187 million premium traded in IBIT, $144 million was in puts, according to SpotGamma. Of the top 20 most-traded contracts by volume, 19 were puts. The most popular contract was the 32.5 strike put expiring Friday, which needs another 4.5% slide in bitcoin to pay off.

Implied volatility in IBIT is just 53, meaning options market-makers expect a little over a 3% move per day. 

According to the options prices in the July 31 expiry, there’s about a 48% chance IBIT will fall below $30.5, or drop another 10%, between now and the end of next month. The odds of a 10% rally by that time are a bit higher, around 55%.

Flows weren’t much more positive in Michael Saylor’s Strategy, where 505,000 puts and 403,000 calls traded. Traders bought 83,000 puts and sold 72,000 calls, while buying just under 58,000 calls.

“Amidst rip-roaring AI stock performance, BTC has struggled in price and in garnering attention,” said Alexander Blume, CEO of Two Prime, an institutional asset manager for bitcoin. “The wobbly behavior of Strategy continues to scare the market, harkening back to other major blow ups the market has seen.”

SpaceX’s IPO didn’t just mint the biggest debut in market history — it also triggered a leveraged ETF historic land grab.

Within days of SpaceX going public, competing fund firms launched 11 leveraged exchange-traded funds tied to the stock, with the trading volume that followed shattering expectations. There was over $10 billion in levered ETF trading during SpaceX’s first week on the stock market, a shortened holiday trading week which encompassed four days through Thursday. It was one among the many notable market stats that stood out about the deal.

Leveraged single-stock ETFs are designed to deliver a multiple of a stock’s daily return which is typically two times, either long or short. Since these funds reset daily, their returns can drift meaningfully from the underlying stock.

Leveraged Shares led the charge, with three days of over $1 billion in volume in its long SpaceX ETF on Tuesday through Thursday, and significant volume in its short SpaceX ETF as well.

Todd Sohn, chief ETF strategist at Strategas Securities, says the pattern is familiar, even if the scale is uncommon. When a heavyweight name like Nvidia or Tesla gets a leveraged ETF built around it, demand shows up. SpaceX brought to the market not just the largest IPO in market history but Elon Musk‘s name attached to it.

Tuesday’s trading volume of $4.2 billion in levered SpaceX ETFs was the peak day for the week.

SpaceX Levered ETFs, first week trading volume

• Leverage Shares 2X Long SPCX Daily ETF (SPCH): $4 billion
• Leverage Shares 2X Short SPCX Daily ETF (SSPC): $2.56 billion
• GraniteShares 2x Short SpaceX Daily ETF (SNK): $765 million
• ProShares Ultra SpaceX (SPCF): $607 million
• Defiance Daily Target 2X Long SpaceX ETF (SPCU): $557 million
• GraniteShares 2x Long SpaceX Daily ETF (SPAL): $516 million
• Direxion Daily SpaceX Bull 2X ETF (LOFF): $378 million
• Defiance Daily Target 2X Short SpaceX ETF (SPCQ): $345 million
• Tradr 2X Short SpaceX Daily ETF (SPCG): $339 million
• T-REX 2X LONG SPCX DAILY TARGET ETF (SPAX): $332 million
• Tradr 2X Long SpaceX Daily ETF (SPCM): $251 million

Source: Strategas Securities, Bloomberg

The SpaceX IPO attracted a high level of interest from retail investors, but many were limited in their access to shares. Major issuers of the ETFs caution that these portfolios are designed for sophisticated self-directed traders, hedge funds, and proprietary trading desks. The products are not built for buy-and-hold retail investors.

Leverage Shares’ chief revenue officer Paul Marino said a stock moving in one direction “compounds and does really well,” but that flips quickly once the stock turns more volatile, and that will be the real test for investors with these products. SpaceX began the week with two straight days of gains, contributing to Tuesday’s peak volume, but turned negative over the second half of the week.

After the two-day slide in shares, many…

Bitcoin is back above the $60,000 mark after falling below that key level for the first time since October 2024 on Friday.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency has lost about 27% of its value in 2026, and it’s now about 50% off its all-time high. Despite the carnage, traders aren’t backing away from this space. The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) was among the top 20 most popular tickers in the options market by volume, and two of the top 15 largest options trades by dollar amount were in Strategy and Coinbase on Monday.

Each of those trades painted a very different picture of where this market could be heading next.

In Michael Saylor’s Strategy, one trader sold 29,425 of the 125/180-call diagonals, collecting about $56 million in the process. Specifically, the trader sold the 125-strike calls expiring Aug. 21 and used the proceeds to buy the 180-calls expiring June 18. It’s an options strategy that is most profitable if Strategy shares drop and stay below $125 through August expiration. Ideally, you want both calls to expire worthless, allowing you to pocket the full credit.

The bitcoin treasury company’s recent sales of the flagship crypto – its first in years – have spooked investors in both the company and the broader cryptocurrency world. But one top expert thinks a rebound is likely.

“In the face of the onslaught of AI narratives undermining trust of traditional systems, bitcoin remains the soundest money, and the resilience of its proof of work architecture has been demonstrated,” said Tom Lee, BitMine chairman and FundStrat head of research.

That resilience will be the key to any crypto comeback, and to Monday’s other marquee crypto trade in Coinbase, where one trader is betting about $21 million on a sizable comeback for the hard-hit exchange stock.

This trader also used a diagonal strategy, selling 10,990 June 18 expiration calls for $4.9 million and buying $26 million worth of Aug. 21 expiration 160-calls. While this setup also profits from time decay, it’s a decidedly more bullish position as the trader is hoping the longer-dated calls appreciate.

This trade takes advantage of elevated premiums in Coinbase to generate immediate income, while positioning for a longer-term move higher in the name. For those August expiration calls to be profitable, the stock will have to move above $183.40 per share, or about 13% higher than where it was in Monday’s session.

Back in August, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were all smiles. They showed up at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York to celebrate a new business partnership with a little-known publicly traded company, then called Alt5 Sigma, to give investors easier access to a cryptocurrency backed by the Trump family.

Less than 10 months later, the company has warned investors it may not be able to stay in business much longer. Its share price has fallen more than 90%, and a rebranding hasn’t revived investor interest. If the company, now called AI Financial Corp., can’t sustainably raise its share price out of penny-stock levels in the next 15 trading days, it faces the prospect of being delisted by the Nasdaq.

One of the few parties who benefited from the Alt5 Sigma transaction is the Trump family. As part of the August deal, Alt5 acquired $1.5 billion worth of crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company co-founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., among others, in 2024. The president and undisclosed members of his family were entitled to roughly $500 million in proceeds from the crypto sale, according to disclosures by World Liberty Financial.

Alt5 closed at $8.97 on Aug. 8, the last trading day before the World Liberty deal was announced. Since then, AI Financial‘s stock — originally trading under the ticker ALTS, now AIFC — fell to 66 cents a share at the June 8 close, a 93% loss, according to FactSet data.

Attorneys for Democracy Defenders Fund told the Securities and Exchange Commission in an April letter that the regulator needs to “commence an independent investigation into ALTS without delay.” The nonpartisan group has sharply criticized the Trump administration over allegations of ethics issues. They didn’t receive a response to their letter. “The question now is: What happened to all that money?” Virginia Canter, chief anti-corruption counsel for the group, said in an interview.

The SEC declined to comment on whether it has looked at AI Financial since its involvement with the Trumps.

AI Financial has become a cautionary tale for investors who saw a Trump-linked deal as a natural winner in a Trump presidency. The company is on its third CEO and third outside auditor since Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. celebrated the World Liberty partnership at the Nasdaq in August. In January, it turned to World Liberty for a loan, then used some of the proceeds to try to lift its own share price. The effort failed. What looked to some like a public-market entry point into the Trump family’s expanding business empire has instead left investors with steep losses.

Eric Trump in an X post in May said he has “zero leadership or decision-making role in the…

It’s been one of the wildest stock markets on record lately but you wouldn’t have known it looking at the Cboe Volatility Index. Friday’s sell-off just made things a lot clearer.

The non-stop, two-month 80% rally in semiconductor stocks that added roughly half a trillion dollars in market cap to the Nasdaq 100, spurred one of the most successful ETF launches in history, and birthed dozens of eye-popping, parabolic single stock moves, finally hit a wall on Friday as the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) dropped almost 10% at its low.

The VIX, which had just touched the lowest level since January on Thursday, posted its biggest single-day pop since March. S&P 500 index options trading reached a record 7.8 million contracts at Cboe on Friday, 16% higher than the previous record set in April.

For many, the sell-off reads as a warning sign for speculative excess in the face of trillions of dollars in upcoming IPO issuance and the potential for rising interest rates. For options traders who had been watching the roller coaster in single stocks, it looks more like an overdue catchup by the broader index.

Coming into this week, a handful of key volatility metrics were at extremes. The spread between single-stock volatility and the broader index reached the widest since Cboe started tracking the data, and one-month implied correlation between the top 50 stocks and the index reached the lowest in a year.

It was the VIX slipping below its long-term average that looked the most out of place.

“Everything is re-syncing,” Brent Kochuba, founder of options analytics platform SpotGamma, said in a call. “The calls were so rich in things like Micron where premiums were bigger than SPY and QQQ combined, this stuff had to come down. The VIX is up but not crazy.”

The bond market was far from a ballast. The 10-year Treasury dropped 40 basis points after Friday’s employment data came in strong, and options traders flooded bearish bets on the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) as well as in corporate-bond funds iShares iBoxx Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) and iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG), where puts outnumbered calls more than 8 to 1.

Higher yields might have added extra pain to the crypto trade. Bitcoin managed to hold $60,000 after a brief trip below that threshold, but Michael Saylor’s Strategy dropped nearly 7% as options traders bought more than twice as many puts as they did calls.

Add it all together and you get the worst day for the Nasdaq since April 2025.

“It didn’t take much to cascade lower,” said Danny Kirsch, head of options at Piper Sandler. “There’s enormous assets in leveraged ETFs particularly tied to semis, and giant hyperscalers Meta and Alphabet issuing equity in front of a huge IPO… not great, Bob.”

A bitcoin rebound, or characteristic dip-buying by investors, is yet to take place. It was last seen trading at $62,500, meaning it is down by about half since its all-time high of $126k in October 2025 – a decline of 50% in just ten months. 

As of now, bitcoin is teetering just above the psychologically important $60k threshold. The last time it traded below $60k was on September 18, 2024.

Charles-Henry Monchau, chief investment officer at Syz Group, said bitcoin’s latest weekly decline has been driven by a combination of Strategy’s forced selling and a crowding-out effect from hot money chasing other assets.

“Speculators are going all-in on AI stocks and memory chips, especially in Korea, and the market also anticipates that upcoming monster IPOs will divert some retail money into the new stocks,” Monchau told CNBC over email. 

He added that the moves downward come despite some positive developments for the sector, including Senate approval of the Clarity Act, which would mark the first wide-ranging piece of legislation pertaining to the industry.

Strategists have also noted a growing correlation with tech stocks, though this has eased over recent weeks as bitcoin has failed to participate in the most recent eye-watering global tech rally. 

“We saw the 30-day Pearson correlation between bitcoin and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 reach a near-perfect positive correlation as recently as a month ago, but that has collapsed over the last several weeks,” Rajiv Sawhney, head of international portfolio management at Wave Digital Assets, told CNBC over email.

“So while global equities, particularly tech stocks, continued to reach new all-time highs, bitcoin has failed to track the same upward price trend.”

Others see the most recent moves as an opportunity to buy the dip. Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Friday, Strive Chief Executive Matt Cole said that bitcoin’s fundamentals have “never been better.”

“This is the fifth time that bitcoin has been at its 200-week moving average — the previous four have all been the perfect time to buy the dip, and I think this time will age in the same manner,” he added. 

Hello, this is Anniek Bao writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.

Wall Street had a strong session overnight — if you squint past the Nasdaq. The Dow hit an all-time high and oil cooled on optimism that the Iran war was nearing its end.

Chip stocks, however, stumbled; bitcoin is hovering at its weakest since the war began, private credit is throwing off sparks again — and a flesh-eating parasite has turned up in Texas.

As Wall Street is throwing a rocket-themed party for SpaceX, rating agency S&P Global made it clear that the blockbuster IPO may not see a swift entry for the company into its benchmark index.

The ceasefire trade is back on, with the Dow surging to a fresh all-time high, the S&P 500 edging higher and oil prices cooling 3%.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he’d be “honored” to meet Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, if a deal can be reached, while the Wall Street Journal reported that the president was reluctant to resume a full-scale war with Tehran.

Brent futures, the international crude benchmark, lost 2.8% to close at $95.03 per barrel, West Texas Intermediate futures dropped 3.1% to settle at $93.04 per barrel Thursday. Both were down in Friday Asia trading.

That drop in oil comes even as Iran-backed Hezbollah has rejected the terms of a U.S.-backed ceasefire agreed between Israel and Lebanon as “absurd, humiliating and insulting,” demanding a full Israeli withdrawal before any deal holds.

From energy to tech: Broadcom tumbled about 15% after missing revenue expectations — enough to drag the Nasdaq down nearly 0.1% even as the rest of Wall Street cheered. The tech contagion spread to stocks in Asia, dragging key indexes lower.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has invited Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on June 11 over the company’s China sales and U.S. export controls, according to a letter seen by CNBC.

Meanwhile, TSMC Chairman Che-Chia Wei told shareholders on Thursday that the firm was striving to keep up with demand and avoid becoming a bottleneck in the global supply chain, while signaling a willingness to raise prices.

Crypto slide continued, with bitcoin weathering its ugliest week in months, briefly dipping below $62,000 before steadying near $63,719. It has now erased all of its gains since the war began, caught between ETF outflows, a rotation into other assets and Michael Saylor’s Strategy revealing its first bitcoin sale since 2022.

Cracks in private credit widened. Blackstone capped withdrawals from its flagship Blackstone Private Credit fund, following a spike in investor redemption requests. It followed Switzerland’s Partners Group, which did the same for one of its private equity vehicles while warning that it…

Bitcoin’s highest conviction holders have joined the sell-off in the cryptocurrency, which could signal the beginning of the end of the ongoing crypto slump, according to Compass Point.

Long-term holders – defined as those that have held onto their coins for at least 155 days, or about five months – were largely inactive from February to April but have turned into sellers in recent weeks, Compass Point analyst Ed Engel said in a note Tuesday.

In the past two days they’ve sold about $2.4 billion in bitcoin, “which has large implications on BTC’s supply/demand balances,” Engel said.

He also highlighted that 26% of bitcoin sold in the last 30 days came from investors who bought it above $90,000.

“This cohort of top-buyers had been resilient throughout the bear market; however, they’re finally capitulating as BTC approaches new cycle lows,” he added. “Top-buyer capitulation is a very common theme in late cycle bear markets. This makes us more confident that BTC’s bear market is in late stages.”

Bitcoin has been struggling to climb back toward its October record of more than $126,000 as uncertainty around the U.S.-Iran war has kept the price under pressure. Meanwhile, however, the stock market has risen to new records. The divergence has investors questioning both of bitcoin’s dominant narratives: that it’s “digital gold” that should benefit from geopolitical uncertainty, and that it trades like a high beta tech stock.

On Tuesday, bitcoin ETFs registered their 12th day in a row — and longest streak ever — of net outflows, according to SoSoValue. Net assets across bitcoin ETFs fell to $85 billion from $107.8 billion on May 14.

Bitcoin is down 10% week-to-date after some fear-based unloading on Monday – following Strategy’s minor sale of 32 coins – triggered a cascade of long liquidations that accelerated the downward pressure.

Still, analysts say Strategy’s sale is not a significant factor driving bitcoin’s price.

“ETF flows are the primary driver of BTC price appreciation, explaining approximately 45% of weekly return variation, and the best vehicle for tracking investor adoption/appetite,” Citi analyst Alex Saunders said in a note. “Recent flows have been negative, and the chances for the passage of a U.S. market structure bill (a potential catalyst for renewed investor interest in our view) are diminishing.”

“We expect sentiment to remain lackluster, especially as the divergence with equity performance remains stark, absent positive news on the regulatory front or ‘de-basement trade’ fears around fiscal position,” he added.

—CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting

Bitcoin on Tuesday fell below $70,000 for the first time since April amid deteriorating market sentiment.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last lower by more than 6% at $67,014.97, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it fell as low as $66,954.99, its lowest level since April 5. Ether declined by 4.7%, and stocks across the crypto sector were in the red as well. Strategy fell 9%, Galaxy lost 5.9% and Coinbase was down 4.7%.

The moves began on Monday, when bitcoin and crypto stocks fell after bitcoin treasury pioneer Strategy reported it sold a small amount of the bitcoin it was holding — its first sale since 2022. While it was well telegraphed by the company, the reversal from chairman and founder Michael Saylor’s “never sell your bitcoin” mantra spooked investors.

That led to a cascade of long liquidations that accelerated the downside pressure. When leveraged traders betting on higher prices are forced out of their positions, exchanges automatically sell their holdings to cover losses. Crypto exchanges have recorded $594 million in long liquidations over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass.

Bitcoin has been struggling to climb back toward its October record of more than $126,000 as uncertainty around the U.S.-Iran war has kept the price under pressure while the stock has risen to new records. This has put both of bitcoin’s dominant narratives under scrutiny: that it’s “digital gold” that should benefit from geopolitical uncertainty, and that it trades like a high beta tech stock.

On Monday, bitcoin ETFs registered their 11th day in a row — and longest streak ever — of net outflows, according to SoSoValue.

Hello, this is Leonie Kidd writing to you from London. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.

It’s a tough time to go to the polls. That’s what U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is finding out today, as his Labour Party loses control of major councils across the country.

He faces discontent across both domestic and foreign issues. But will today’s results be enough to launch a full-scale leadership challenge?

The results are still coming in, but Britain’s ruling Labour party is braced for heavy losses in local elections, piling the pressure on Starmer.

The party has already lost numerous key seats across the 136 councils in England, with 129 seats in Scotland and 96 in Wales also being contested. So far, Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK has made the biggest gains, while the Greens and Liberal Democrats have also benefited from a loss of faith in Labour.

Big voices within the party — including former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell — say leadership change has to ‘be on the agenda’, while Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was forced to deny a claim he advised Starmer to map out his departure.

U.K. borrowing costs hit their highest level since 1998 in the build-up to the vote, adding market pressure to the political challenges.

Meanwhile, the European Union is back in the White House’s sights. U.S. President Donald Trump took to Truth Social after a call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, saying: “I agree to give her until our Country’s 250th Birthday, or, unfortunately, their tariffs would immediately jump to much higher levels.“

Tensions in the Middle East continue to rise. The U.S. and Iran opened fire in the Strait of Hormuz, with each side claiming the other initiated the attack.

The war in Iran threatens to delay progress on other topics, as Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping prepare for a landmark meeting next week.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already said that Iran will be discussed when the leaders meet on May 14 and 15. And earlier this week, China hosted Iran’s foreign minister for the first time since the war began in late February — raising hopes for a peace deal, sending oil prices lower and fueling stock-market gains.

— Leonie Kidd

France is a fan favorite for the FIFA World Cup — but AI is backing another nation for glory, says BofA

France has emerged as a clear fan favorite for this year’s FIFA World Cup in North America, according to a Bank of America survey.

Roughly 40% of fans surveyed by BofA are betting on another World Cup win for Les Bleus this summer, with France and Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappé expected to be the “golden boot” winner as the tournament’s top scorer.

However, Microsoft’s Copilot artificial intelligence tool is backing another champion, saying Spain is…