bitcoin ether and other major tokens fell early Monday, extending a strong November close amid fresh panic from DeFi platform Yearn Finance.
BTC, the leading cryptocurrency by market value, fell more than 3% to almost $87,000 during the first hours of Asian trading. Ethereum’s native token ETH fell 5%, while SOL, DOGE, and XRP fell more than 4%, according to data from CoinDesk.
The sell-off accelerated hours after Yearn’s X alert flagged an “incident” in yETH’s liquidity pool and mentioned that its V2 and V3 vaults remain safe and unaffected.
Conversations on social media suggested that the attacker exploited a vulnerability to generate large amounts of yETH in a single transaction, draining the liquidity pool and obtaining around 1,000 ETH ($3 million), which were routed through mixers. YETH is a user-governed liquidity pool token consisting of several liquid staking derivatives (LST) of Ethereum.
Yearn’s issuance comes days after leading Korean exchange Upbit suffered a multimillion-dollar hack and underscores how institutional inflows have inflated crypto market valuations without strengthening security infrastructure.
The initial sell-off in the Asian session led to liquidations exceeding $400 million in leveraged crypto futures, primarily affecting long positions, according to data source Coinglass. This indicates that many traders were betting on a price rebound and the sudden drop took them by surprise.
Bitcoin ended November (UTC) with a 17.5% loss, the biggest since March, despite prices recovering from nearly $80,000 to over $90,000 in the final week of the month. Ether fell 22%, recording its worst performance since February.
The dismal performance came as institutional demand weakened significantly. US-listed BTC spot ETFs lost $3.48 billion in net outflows in November, the second-largest redemption on record, according to data source SoSoValue. Ether ETFs lost a record $1.42 billion in capital outflows.
1:29 UTC: Adds comments on liquidations, November performance and ETFs.
