# Why Bitcoin Could Crash Again This Week

## Leveraged futures and liquidation risk

**Speaker 1:** [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfywZJ3BpkE&t=0s) Before I get to the calendar, there's a risk building inside the market itself, and it's the one to watch over the next 24 to 72 hours.

Since this morning's hot inflation report, traders have been piling back in to push Bitcoin higher, but they're doing it with borrowed money in the futures market instead of buying actual Bitcoin. More than $1 billion in new futures bets, roughly 12,000 Bitcoin worth, opened up in the hours after the report, while the price kept sliding from about $83,900 to $81,700.

![Multi-panel market chart showing a falling upper line and a rising middle line (00:03).](figures/frame_0003000.png)

And traders are still paying a premium to stay long. That is a fragile kind of market. When too many traders are leaning the exact same way with leverage and price moves against them, their positions get forced closed. And those forced sales knock the price lower. That sets off the next round of forced sales.

It's the exact same chain reaction that wiped out $800 million this week when we rejected 87K. And it's exactly how a final flush toward the low $70,000 range could happen fast with no news needed at all.