Live updates: Cryptos tumble, with ETH down 5% as Tom Lee confirms Bitmine buying limit

liveUpdated 30 minutes ago

Traders betting on higher prices took the brunt of forced selling as interest rates spiked upwards on Wednesday.

By Shaurya Malwa, James Van Straten, and Omkar Godbole

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BitMine Immersion Technologies will stop buying ether ETH$2,580.72 once it has accumulated 5% of the cryptocurrency’s supply, Chairman Tom Lee said during a keynote at Token2049 in Singapore on Wednesday.

“That’s a hard cap. We’re not gonna be accumulating past 5%,” Lee said. “We’re not gonna own more than 5% of Ethereum.”

He said the company needs to buy another 100,000 ETH to hit that self-imposed ceiling.

Ether’s price has declined by 4.5% to $2,477 since midnight UTC hours. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is down 2.2%.

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The global bond sell-off continues, with U.S. Treasury yields rising across the curve and pressure spreading across Europe and the UK. The U.S. 10-year yield is at 5.333%, while the 30-year yield has reached a fresh high of 5.715%. In the UK, the 30-year gilt yield has surpassed 6%, reaching 6.014%.

Renewed dollar strength is adding to the pressure, with the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) climbing back above 102.

Bitcoin has fallen more than 2% over the past 24 hours, dropping below $84,000 and trading as low as $83,300. Oil initially jumped on news of Iranian tanker attacks, but WTI crude has since reversed those gains, turning slightly negative over the past 24 hours and slipping below $90 a barrel.

U.S. equities are also showing signs of a pullback after the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 hit all-time highs on Tuesday. Invesco QQQ, which tracks the Nasdaq 100, is down just under 1% in premarket trading.

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Bitcoin fell as much as 2.4% on Wednesday to about $83,600, slipping below $84,000 as about $550 million in leveraged crypto bets were wiped out over 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data.

Those were liquidations, positions an exchange closes automatically when a trader using borrowed money can no longer cover the losses. Most of them hit longs, or traders betting on higher prices.

Ether dropped nearly 4% to about $2,590, XRP lost about 4% and SOL fell more than 3%.

Dan Khus, chief analyst at LVRG Research, told Bloomberg the drop looks like “a leverage flush instead of a downward trend.”

The slide takes bitcoin under the $84,000 level that FxPro flagged on Tuesday as the point where sellers take control. The recent low near $83,000 is the next test.

Risk appetite cooled across markets. Renewed Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz dimmed hopes that shipping through the waterway would return to normal and pushed Brent crude above $101 a barrel. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed back above 5.3%, and Europe’s Stoxx 600 snapped a three-day winning streak. U.S. stock futures were little changed after the S&P 500 closed at a record.

Minutes from the Fed’s last meeting come out later Wednesday. Rachael Lucas, an analyst at BTC Markets, told Bloomberg that a hawkish read could push yields and the dollar higher and keep risk assets under pressure.