Bitcoin Drops Below $81,000 — Analysts Cite Key Reasons for the Decline

• The price of bitcoin has fallen below $81,000.
• Experts attribute the collapse to a decrease in liquidity and macroeconomic risks.
• Also among the reasons for the fall are called the sale of assets by DAT-companies.

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On November 21, 2025, the value of bitcoin collapsed below $81,000. Back at the beginning of the month, the first cryptocurrency was trading near $110,000. Analysts attribute such a sharp collapse to several factors at once: reduced liquidity, macroeconomic risks, unprofitability of mining and others.

The CEO of the analytical platform CryptoQuant Ki Yang Ju noted that the situation in the market is worse than expected. He noted that macro liquidity is now more important than the onchain cycle: dollar liquidity is shrinking, risk assets are being sold, and this trend is likely to last until next year until liquidity starts to soften.

Ki Young Ju added that he is not an expert on macroeconomics, so he focuses on the opinions of experienced analysts, in particular Luckey Gromen.

The latter says the US fiscal deficit is very large and foreign demand for government bonds has weakened. Without new liquidity, the Treasury bond market becomes unstable, but when liquidity returns next year, deficit assets such as gold and bitcoin should start to rise, Gromen said.

Financial analyst Jacob King believes bitcoin is in for “a lot of chaos” in the coming months. Bitcoin mining is now at its most unprofitable state in a decade, he said. The current production cost of 1 BTC exceeds $112,000, while the market price is much lower. This could lead to massive equipment shutdowns, a drop in hash rate and further collapse, the expert said.

PlaceholderVC partner Chris Berniske linked the fall to the activity of Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) – companies that accumulate cryptocurrency. According to him, they have started selling assets and this process is just beginning.

Lookonchain reported on the financial health of such companies in particular:

• Strategy owns about 650,000 BTC bought at an average of $74,433. The profit margin is about 12%.
• Bitmine has over 3.5 million ETH with an unrealized loss of $4.5 billion.
• Forward Industries owns 6.8 million SOLs with a loss of over $700 million.

Glassnode analysts reported that the number of bitcoins in realized loss has reached levels last seen during the FTX cryptocurrency exchange collapse in November 2022. They explained that this was mainly due to short-term holders selling en masse.

Also Bloomberg, citing JP Morgan analysts, noted that Strategy faces a real threat of being excluded from the major indices that have given it a presence in traditional portfolios.

Experts warned that Strategy could lose its place in indices such as MSCI USA and Nasdaq 100. If MSCI makes that decision, as much as $2.8 billion could exit the market, and even more funds if other index providers join in. Passive funds linked to the company already control about $9 billion in market value. A decision is expected to be made by Jan. 15, 2026, the report said.

An analyst under the pseudonym KAY believes that if this happens, there will be a massive outflow of MSTR shares and it will affect the first cryptocurrency.

As a result, experts have identified the main reasons for the market collapse as:

• reduced global liquidity and tight monetary policy.
• unprofitability of mining.
• massive sell-offs by DAT companies.
• panic selling by short-term holders.
• potential exclusion of Strategy from major stock indices.

Recall, earlier CryptoQuant CEO stated that bitcoin’s bull cycle ended at the $100,000 level.