Bearish sentiment prevails as bitcoin falls below $67,000, ether drops

Markets Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Bearish sentiment prevails as bitcoin falls below $67,000, ether drops Bitcoin and ether extended declines, dragging down crypto-related stocks, even as gold and silver rallied. By Francisco Rodrigues , Saksham Diwan | Edited by Sheldon Reback Feb 11, 2026, 11:36 a.m. Make us preferred on Google (CoinDesk) What to know : Bitcoin and ether extended declines, dragging down crypto-related stocks, even as gold and silver rallied. Derivatives data show an extended deleveraging in bitcoin futures, with negative funding rates, cooling institutional demand and elevated options skew signaling defensive positioning despite some bottom-fishing. Onchain lender Spark debuted new institutional products that link offchain, custodied assets to DeFi markets, helping manage over $9 billion in stablecoin liquidity as its SPK token outperforms the broader crypto market. Bitcoin BTC $ 66,944.44 fell 2.4% in the past 24 hours to around $66,900, while ether ETH $ 1,950.42 lost 2.7% to trade back below $2,000. The broader CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index dropped 3.7%. The declines weighed on crypto-related stocks. Coinbase (COIN) dropped about 4% in pre-market trading, while rival exchange Bullish (BLSH), which owns CoinDesk, fell 2.3%. Bitcoin treasury companies Strategy (MSTR) and Strive (ASST) also lost about 2.3%. Trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) fell 4.7% after saying fourth-quarter crypto earnings fell 38%. STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms & conditions and privacy policy . Gold prices, in contrast, added around 0.9% to $5,070 an ounce while silver rose over 5% after weaker-than-expected U.S. retail sales data pointed to slowing consumer demand. The dollar weakened, and Treasury yields fell as investors adjusted their expectations around interest-rate cuts. On Polymarket , odds of a Federal Reserve rate cut in March have risen from 7% to around 19% since the beginning of the month. On Kalshi they’ve reached 21%. Derivatives Positioning Bearish momentum in BTC futures is intensifying, with open interest falling further to $15.6 billion. The drop signals an extended deleveraging phase, underscored by funding rates falling deeper into negative territory on Binance (-6%) and Bybit (-0.50%), while a shrinking three-month basis (now at 1.6%) suggests institutional appetite is cooling rapidly. The bitcoin options market continues to signal high defensive caution as the one-week 25-delta skew has climbed to 23% even as call dominance remains steady at 55%, implying there's some bottom-fishing going on. Despite this localized tension, the implied volatility term structure remains unchanged, maintaining its hybrid state between backwardation and contango as the market balances expensive near-term protection with stabilized long-term volatility expectations. Coinglass data shows $297 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 77-23 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($121 million), ETH ($89 million) and others ($16 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations. The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $66,100 as a core liquidation level to monitor in case of a price drop. Token Talk Spark, the onchain capital allocator incubated by Sky, introduced two new lending products targeting institutional borrowers, a move aimed at bridging the $33 billion offchain crypto lending market with decentralized finance. The products, Spark Prime and Spark Institutional Lending, extend the platform's reach beyond decentralized finance-native users. Spark Prime allows institutional clients to trade on margin and settle off-exchange while using collateral across both centralized and decentralized platforms. Spark Institutional Lending is built for firms that require regulated custody. Through integrations with custodians like Anchorage Digital, institutions can borrow against assets held offchain, tapping into Spark’s onchain markets without moving capital onchain themselves. Spark currently manages over $9 billion in stablecoin liquidity across DeFi and holds $5.2 billion in total value locked, per data from DefiLlama . Spark native token SPK, whose holders govern through the DAO the allocation and risk envelope for these products, is up more than 2% in the past 24 hours, outperforming the wider market. Crypto Markets Today Derivatives Altcoins More For You Tom Lee says stop timing the bottom and start buying the dip By Krisztian Sandor | Edited by Jamie Crawley , Aoyon Ashraf 2 hours ago Thomas Lee, speaking on stage at Hong Kong Consensus 2026, said investors should be looking at opportunities as crypto is in the midst of a "mini winter." What to know : Fundstrat's Thomas Lee urged investors to view the sell-off as a buying opportunity, arguing that gold has likely peaked for the year and that bitcoin and ether are poised to outperform Lee sees ether possibly needing a brief dip below $1,800 before a sustained recovery. Bitcoin fell back below $67,000 on Wednesday, extending a pullback from last week's rebound and marking a roughly 50 percent drawdown from its October record highs. 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