Bitcoin fell below $60K after hot inflation. Forced sellers are now the story.

Bitcoin fell to $58,189 on June 25. Forced selling is now the story. CryptoSlate put the intraday high at $61,868 before the move broke. CoinDesk later showed bitcoin near $59,400 after the first rebound.

The catalyst is named. May PCE inflation came in at 4.1% year over year, per CryptoSlate, with core PCE at 3.4%. That killed the easy rate-cut story for now. Markets moved toward pricing a Fed hike by October.

Then the forced selling started. CoinGlass data cited by Ambcrypto showed $1.48B in crypto liquidations over 24 hours. CryptoSlate earlier put the damage closer to $1B, likely from an earlier snapshot. Ambcrypto said longs took $1.21B of the $1.48B total.

If you were long and using borrowed money, your bag got hit twice. Price fell first. Then exchanges closed positions into a thin tape. Ambcrypto also cited 217,685 liquidated traders and a $38.05M Hyperliquid BTC-USD closure.

Spot pressure did not help. CryptoSlate reported more than $470M in bitcoin sell orders on Binance within one minute of the $60K break. Ambcrypto cited $469.08M in U.S. spot bitcoin ETF outflows on June 24.

BlackRock also deposited 3,410 BTC and 5,132 ETH to Coinbase Prime, per U.Today citing Lookonchain. That is not confirmed selling. Coinbase Prime transfers can be standard ETF plumbing. Still, the timing matters.

The only number that matters next is liquidation follow-through. CoinDesk said bitcoin open interest rose 0.28% while price fell about 3%. Shorts are adding, not leaving. That leaves room for a squeeze, but only if spot buyers show up first.