Bitcoin breaks below $60,000 for the first time since 2024 as US payrolls surprise to the upside
On 5 June 2026 at roughly 18:37 UTC, Bitcoin fell below $60,000 for the first time since 2024. Within hours, Cointelegraph reported that some $172 million in long positions had been liquidated in a single hour as the price broke $61,000 on its way down. By the close of the US afternoon session, BTC was trading around $60,300, with market analysts citing "seller exhaustion" at the lows. The Polymarket contract pricing Bitcoin's path through the year was giving a 69% probability of a print below $50,000 before the end of 2026.
The move is significant in isolation. It is more significant in the company it keeps. On the same day, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that nonfarm payrolls rose by 172,000 in May — well above the consensus that had drifted lower over the preceding weeks — with the unemployment rate holding at 4.3%. The two prints, taken together, do more than punctuate a bad day for crypto. They puncture the macro thesis on which the bull case has rested for the better part of eighteen months.
That thesis, in its simplest form, was: a softening labour market would deliver a Fed cutting cycle, weaker real yields would underwrite a continued risk-asset rally, and Bitcoin — increasingly treated as a leveraged proxy for that liquidity impulse — would compound the move. The May payrolls print does not kill that thesis. It degrades it. Each month of resilient employment pushes the expected first cut further to the right, compresses the front-end of the rates curve, and tightens the financial conditions that crypto longs have been funding themselves against.
The leverage that broke first
The single most informative data point from 5 June is not the price level. It is the $172 million in long liquidations over a one-hour window, as reported by Cointelegraph. That is the leverage tail getting flushed — speculative positioning concentrated in perpetual futures, margin lending, and onshore venues that had crowded the same trade in the same direction. A move of this size against a leveraged long book is reflexive: stops trigger, margin calls force selling, the selling pushes the price, more stops trigger, and the loop runs until the marginal leveraged position is gone.
The size of the cascade is a function of how much leverage was on. Through the rally of late 2024 and into 2025, open interest on perpetual futures expanded materially as the price climbed and as expectations of Fed easing pulled more speculative dollars into the asset. The unwind of that open interest is what produces the kind of one-hour liquidation events the Cointelegraph figure captures. Once the leverage has been cleared, the price action becomes a cleaner read on spot flows — and on whether strategic buyers are willing to step in at the new level.
"Seller exhaustion," the language Cointelegraph's analysts used as BTC tested $60,300, is the technician's term for the moment the marginal seller runs out of inventory. It is a tactical signal, not a strategic one. The exhaustion call is reliable at identifying short-term bottoms within an ongoing trend; it is less reliable at distinguishing between a correction and a regime change. The next several sessions of price action will tell us which one we are in.
The macro print underneath the price
The 172,000 May payrolls print is the under-reported half of the day's news. A labour market still adding jobs at that pace is a labour market that has not broken. The unemployment rate holding at 4.3%, the level it has been parked at for the better part of six months, is consistent with a slow-softening trajectory rather than the rapid deterioration that would justify an aggressive easing cycle.
The transmission to crypto is mechanical. Resilient employment data reduces the probability of near-term rate cuts, supports the dollar through relative-rate differentials, and tightens global financial conditions. Bitcoin's correlation with the dollar has tightened through 2026; a stronger dollar has been a reliable headwind for BTC, and the May payrolls print is a stronger-dollar input. The ETF flow tape, which had been the most visible bridge between traditional portfolio allocation and the spot market, has turned choppier over the past quarter. None of this is decisive in any single session. Collectively, it shifts the burden of proof back onto the bulls.
The Fed's preferred glide path, repeatedly signalled in communications through the spring, has been for a measured easing cycle predicated on continued moderation in employment. May's number does not contradict that path; it postpones it. Postponement, in markets, is a form of tightening — particularly for assets that had front-run the cut.
The bull case, restated
The bull case has not disappeared. It has been knocked sideways, and re-articulated. The argument runs on three legs.
First, the supply side. The April 2024 halving established a structurally lower new-issuance rate; the historical pattern from prior cycles has been a 12- to 18-month supply squeeze following each halving. Even with multiple drawdowns, the supply backdrop remains tighter than at any prior point in Bitcoin's history.
Second, the demand side. Spot ETF flows, volatile as they are, have been positive on a cumulative basis since launch. The cohort of buyers who came in through the ETF wrapper represents a different kind of holder — slower-moving, balance-sheet-driven, and less responsive to single-day volatility. The corporate-treasury allocation narrative, after a slow start, has produced a handful of meaningful commitments that, if replicated, would change the demand floor.
Third, the cycle. The argument is that the drawdown from the 2025 peak is a correction within a structural bull trend, not the end of one. The 2024-vintage cohort of buyers is, on average, still in profit on a dollar basis. The leverage tail of that cohort is now under water, but the long-only strategic capital has not been tested in the way that would force a broader reallocation.
There is a counter-argument, and it is simpler. The base case that bulls were running was a soft-landing macro and an aggressive cutting cycle. The data is not delivering that base case. When the macro setup fails, the bull case does not get to keep the same multipliers. The Polymarket-implied 69% probability of a print below $50,000 is the market's way of saying that the bear case is no longer the tail — it is the central scenario.
What the next 72 hours will tell us
Three things will resolve the question of whether 5 June was a turning point in the narrative or in the trend.
The first is the next two payrolls prints. A second upside surprise would confirm the higher-for-longer thesis, push the rate-cut expectations back further, and put the $55,000–$58,000 range in play as the next downside target. A downside surprise — the kind of print that bulls have been waiting for — would revive the cuts narrative and likely produce a sharp relief rally, the kind of move that takes the price back into the low $60,000s within a session.
The second is the spot ETF flow tape. Cumulative flows are one thing; the marginal flow over a two-week window is what tells you whether strategic buyers are stepping in at the new levels. Sustained outflows over a fortnight would be a meaningful deterioration, suggesting that the slow-money cohort has also decided to reduce exposure. Persistent inflows would suggest the opposite — that the post-halving thesis is still underwritten by structural capital.
The third is the broader risk-asset complex. If the move in Bitcoin is accompanied by a parallel drawdown in equities — particularly in the AI-infrastructure cohort that has been the marginal driver of US benchmarks — then the Bitcoin story is symptomatic of a broader de-risking, and the relevant macro input is global growth, not just US monetary policy. If Bitcoin is moving on its own, against a flat or rising equity tape, then the story is crypto-specific and the bottom is more likely to be a function of leverage clearing and spot accumulation.
For now, the 5 June print is a turning point in the narrative. Whether it is a turning point in the trend depends on which of those three threads resolves in which direction over the coming sessions. As of 18:37 UTC on 5 June, none of them has yet.
Desk note: Monexus framed this as a leverage-driven technical event embedded in a deteriorating macro setup, rather than a stand-alone crypto story. The payrolls print is the under-reported half of the day's news.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonfarm_payrolls
- https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.htm
- https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy.htm