Yearn Hack And Yen Shock Turn Crypto’s Record Run Into Rout

A fresh DeFi hack became the spark for a broad crypto selloff that left Bitcoin pinned near $87,000 and exposed just how fragile this market still is.

When Yearn Finance’s yETH product was exploited for millions of dollars and part of the stolen funds were routed through Tornado Cash, confidence in the whole DeFi complex evaporated.

Traders already nervous about tight global liquidity suddenly rushed to de-risk, and leverage was cut across the board. Bitcoin slid 5–8 percent on Monday, extending a drop from October’s peak above $120,000 to the mid-$80,000s.

Ether fell toward $2,800, Solana hovered around $127, XRP eased to just above $2 and Litecoin slipped back into the high $70s.

Roughly $1 billion in leveraged positions was liquidated as stop-losses and margin calls cascaded through exchanges, turning the Yearn incident into a full-scale washout.

The hack landed on a market already under pressure from traditional finance. Yields on Japanese government bonds jumped to their highest levels since 2008, threatening the yen carry trade that has quietly funded risk-taking for years.

As those flows were unwound, the dollar index rebounded toward the high 90s and crypto was treated like any other high-beta asset rather than a safe alternative to government money.

Crypto Charts Turn Bearish Despite ETF Flows

Technical signals underline that change in mood. On weekly charts, Bitcoin still sits in a longer-term uptrend, but the daily and four-hour structures are clearly bearish, with repeated failures around $90,000–$95,000 and key support now clustered between $80,000 and $83,000.

Ether defends the $2,800 area; a clean break would point toward a deeper retracement. Solana behaves like leveraged Bitcoin, while XRP’s growing ETF ecosystem is offset by extreme concentration in a few large wallets.

Flows from supposedly stabilising instruments offer little comfort. Spot Bitcoin ETFs suffered record November outflows of well over $3 billion and started the new month flat.

Ethereum and XRP products attracted fresh money, yet order books remain thin. At the fringes, tokens like MON, MYX, FARTCOIN and JELLYJELLY jumped by double digits while TRADOOR collapsed more than 75 percent in a day.

For disciplined investors, the lesson is harsh but simple: one mid-sized DeFi hack was enough to show that this market still behaves less like a parallel financial system and more like a leveraged casino.

This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error