Bitcoin, Ether Little Changed Over Weekend After $400M Liquidation Rout

• Analysts expect increased market volatility in the upcoming week due to key macroeconomic events such as the CPI release and a speech by Janet Yellen.

• The crypto market experienced a downturn following the release of stonger-than-expected U.S. jobs data, with meme stocks like GameStop also seeing declines, impacting riskier assets like alternative tokens and meme coins.

Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) were little changed over the weekend as open interest and trading volumes slumped after a $400 million leverage flush out on Friday, dampening market momentum.

However, analysts at Presto Research said in a market brief to CoinDesk that they expect market volatility to return in the week ahead with macroeconomic catalysts such as the CPI release on Wednesday, the FOMC meeting on Thursday, and Janet Yellen’s speech on Friday.

Record leverage build-up on bitcoin futures cost bulls as the market plunged on Friday following the release of non-farm payrolls (NFP) figures. The NFP number came in stronger than expected, with the US economy adding 275,000 jobs compared to the expected 185,000. BTC saw a sharp decline following the release, falling from $71,000 to $69,000.

Elsewhere, a slide in meme stock GameStop (GME) appeared to weigh in on riskier assets such as alternative tokens and meme coins, with major memes dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) losing as much as 10%.

Since Friday, open interest, or the number of unsettled futures contracts across various tokens, slid from $99 billion to $60 billion, indicating traders significantly pared bets. Volumes fell 10% in the past 24 hours, Coinglass data shows.

BTC traded just over $69,400 in early European hours on Monday, while ETH traded around $3,660. Solana (SOL) and xrp (XRP) showed slight losses. BNB Chain’s BNB tokens lost 5.5% as traders likely took profits following a rise to a lifetime peak of over $710 last week.

Cardano’s (ADA) was slightly up on Monday following confirmation of a technical event that could affect the fundamentals of the network and its token.