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Bitcoin experienced a brief spike in volatility on December 24, when its price unexpectedly revisited levels last seen in 2023.
This occurred on the Binance exchange at around 09:15 a.m. (UTC) on December 24, 2025, when the BTC/USD1 trading pair printed a sharp downward wick. In particular, the price plunged abruptly from the $86,000 zone to as low as $24,111.
Notably, Bitcoin last traded near the $24,000 level in September 2023, as it recovered from the bear market crash. Since then, the flagship crypto staged a strong recovery and later surged to a peak of $126,198 in October 2025.
However, during yesterday’s trading session, the BTC/USD1 pair on Binance briefly revisited this historic zone, momentarily touching a multi-year low of $24,111.
#Bitcoin briefly revisited 2023 levels as the BTC/USD1 pair saw a sharp wick to around $24,111 on Dec. 24 at 17:15.
The price quickly recovered and later stabilized near $87,880, according to Binance market data. pic.twitter.com/1W0r3BSG01
— TheCryptoBasic (@thecryptobasic) December 25, 2025
Bitcoin Regains Stability Almost Immediately
The abrupt drop unsettled market participants, as it marked a sharp deviation from Bitcoin’s prevailing trading range near $86,000. Nonetheless, the development was short-lived. The BTC/USD1 pair quickly rebounded, helping restore trader confidence.
Following the recovery, Bitcoin’s price stabilized around $87,880. Such extreme wicks are often linked to low liquidity, large market orders, or exchange-specific anomalies, rather than a broader shift in market sentiment.
Main Cause
In a commentary, Catherine Chan, an executive at Solv Protocol, confirmed that the incident was not a market crash but a liquidity-driven event. According to her, the unusual price action followed Binance’s launch of a 20% fixed-APY deposit promotion, which rapidly increased demand for the USD1 stablecoin.
After the announcement, many users swapped USDT for USD1, pushing the stablecoin to a notable 0.39% premium—an outsized move for an asset designed to maintain price stability. As demand surged, Chan explained that some sophisticated traders borrowed USD1 on Lista DAO using SolvBTC or SolvBTC-BTCB as collateral, paying roughly 0.5% APY.
However, the situation quickly reversed when a trader attempted to sell USD1 via a BTC/USD1 market order. Since liquidity in that trading pair was extremely thin, the order consumed most available buy orders and briefly triggered an abnormal price collapse.
Previous Incident
Notably, this was not the first time the BTC/USD1 pair experienced such volatility. Earlier this month, on December 10, the pair similarly plunged from around $96,000 to $76,000 under comparable conditions.
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BTC Crash on Binance
Bitcoin Still in Charge
Meanwhile, the incident comes as Bitcoin and the wider crypto market continue to face mounting downward pressure. Bitcoin has slipped 4.43% month-to-date, extending its year-to-date decline to 6.4%.
Despite this, Bitcoin’s losses remain relatively modest compared with those of other top-10 cryptocurrencies. While BTC is down 6.4% year-to-date, XRP, Ethereum, and Solana have recorded deeper pullbacks of 10.3%, 12.4%, and 35%, respectively.
Meanwhile, only a few top-10 non-stablecoin assets, such as Bitcoin Cash, Tron, and BNB, have outperformed Bitcoin so far this year. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading around $87,601, down 30.7% from its all-time high of $126,198 reached in October 2025.