Bitcoin price swings like a pendulum: what’s driving the move

If you zoom in on the last 12 hours, the chart really does look like a pendulum: a sharp dump into the lows, a fast snapback toward 90k, and then another attempt to steady a bit below that level. CoinMarketCap data puts the past day’s range at roughly $87,814 to $91,344, with price hovering around $89.8K. This doesn’t read like a calm, orderly correction. It’s choppy, impulse-driven trading, and liquidity seems thin in spots, which makes every push feel exaggerated.

Analysts tie the selloff to a mix of two storylines. The first is Donald Trump’s tariff threats, which tend to hit risk assets broadly when traders flip into a “risk-off” posture. The second is less obvious but potentially more disruptive: growing stress in Japan’s government bond market. That’s revived talk about carry trades unwinding and about global liquidity tightening in places markets have leaned on for years.

You can see the fallout in the numbers. Over the past 24 hours, Coinglass data shows liquidations topping $1.8 billion, with long positions taking the biggest hit. It’s the familiar cascade: price slides, leveraged longs get forced out, and the forced selling accelerates the drop.

The big question now isn’t “why did it fall,” but how quickly the market can regain control of the range. For the moment, bitcoin looks like an asset being bought on fear and sold on any hint that liquidity is drying up.