Altcoins drive crypto declines amid Asian stock drops; Bitcoin slightly down since midnight UTC

Bitcoin fell to just above $80,000 around 02:30 UTC before recovering to about $81,200, down around 0.5% since midnight UTC. Altcoins experienced heavier losses; the CoinDesk 80 slid 2.2% compared to 0.7% for the Bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 5. This decline coincided with South Korea’s Kospi plunging 8% and Nasdaq 100 index futures sliding about 1%. Nearly $1 billion in crypto futures bets were liquidated over 24 hours following a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation report, with Ether seeing more liquidations ($200 million) than Bitcoin ($115 million).