Bitcoin miner Jiang Zhuoer sells DeFi tokens after BTC falls to $62K

Bitcoin mining entrepreneur Jiang Zhuoer has sold all his small-cap decentralized finance tokens and suspended trading after Bitcoin’s plunge toward $62,000 challenged his view that the market was entering a new bull phase.

In a November 15 post on X, the BTC.TOP mining pool founder said he used a rebound during the morning session to close his positions in smaller DeFi cryptocurrencies. He said his losses were still manageable, but the latest decline had moved much faster than he expected.

The sale does not mean Jiang has exited every cryptocurrency holding. He described his remaining portfolio as hedged and said he would stop trading temporarily while reassessing the market.

Jiang Zhuoer sells DeFi tokens and hedges remaining holdings

Jiang outlined a combination of positions he described as neutral: a 100% Ethereum long exposure, a 100% Bitcoin long exposure and a Bitcoin short position sized at 200%. In his account, the short was intended to offset the exposure from his existing holdings.

The arrangement leaves him with both long and short trades rather than an entirely cash-only portfolio. The percentages describe his stated position sizes, and the actual protection depends on how Bitcoin and Ethereum prices move relative to each other.

In a previous trading update, he said the hedge was designed to protect existing ETH and BTC holdings while leaving his small-cap DeFi tokens outside the arrangement. He had initially planned to wait and close the short position if Bitcoin returned to its previous trading level.

After Sunday’s slide, Jiang decided the smaller tokens carried too much risk if prices continued falling. He acknowledged that his medium-term forecast had been seriously wrong and said he intended to take time away from trading.

Bitcoin breaks price levels Jiang expected to hold

The selloff pushed Bitcoin below two prices Jiang had identified as potential support. He expected the point of control, a volume-based chart level at $63,853, to hold for some time. Bitcoin also moved below his $64,100 level, drawn from a 78.6% Fibonacci retracement.

Both gave way quickly, prompting him to reconsider a thesis he had described in a November 14 post as an underdeveloped or premature bull market. He had set $61,576 as an invalidation threshold based on a volume-area-low reading.

Bitcoin reached an intraday low of $62,081 on November 15, according to BTC price data, coming within $505, or roughly 0.8%, of his level. It subsequently recovered to around $65,400, though it remained down nearly 14% over seven days.

Jiang identified another conditional risk at $57,800. He warned that if Bitcoin dropped below that price and the market proved to be in the later stages of a bear cycle, smaller DeFi tokens could suffer deeper losses. He did not say that this scenario had already occurred.

Bitcoin liquidation wave adds pressure to altcoins

The change in his trading stance followed losses across the cryptocurrency market. In its November 15 Bitcoin report, crypto.news recorded $1.96 billion in liquidations over 24 hours, including nearly $750 million tied to Bitcoin.

Almost $600.5 million of Bitcoin’s total involved long positions, as exchanges closed leveraged trades whose owners could no longer meet collateral requirements. Selling continued despite Bitcoin briefly recovering from its session low.

Spot fund flows showed continued weakness. Farside Investors recorded roughly $1.91 billion in withdrawals from US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds across seven consecutive sessions ending November 13. Friday alone accounted for $185.4 million.

A separate measure of US buying demand remained negative. The Coinbase premium discount had lasted 51 consecutive days by November 13, with Bitcoin trading 0.10% below the comparable Binance price at the latest reading.

Other industry figures were reducing their risk exposure. OneKey founder Yishi urged investors to avoid leverage and speculative altcoins during the same downturn, recommending Bitcoin spot holdings and sufficient cash for living expenses.

Jiang disputes Binance selling rumors and questions Coinbase weakness

Jiang addressed speculation that Binance had deliberately sold cryptocurrency to recover money lost in its October security breach. He rejected the theory in a separate post, arguing that prices on Binance were not substantially lower than those on other major exchanges.

He instead pointed to Coinbase’s discount and said some traders suspected that “some major U.S. institution was forced to sell crypto.” The suggestion remains speculative, with no identified institution or evidence establishing a forced sale.

Jiang questioned whether the selling could have resulted from bankruptcy, a margin call or information that had not become public. He did not identify a particular institution or provide evidence connecting the activity to any of those possibilities.

In another post on Strategy, Jiang challenged speculation that the company had pledged its own shares as collateral for corporate borrowing. He said the public filings he reviewed did not show such an arrangement and pointed instead to convertible bonds and other financing.