Bitcoin Blowout: Plunging Crypto Prices Trigger $800 Million in Liquidations

Bitcoin’s tumultuous Thursday apparently caught traders unawares, with the token’s sudden plunge triggering nearly $300 million worth of BTC-specific liquidations in 24 hours, and over $800 million worth of liquidations across the broader crypto market. 

Early Thursday morning, Bitcoin nearly touched $74,000, notching yet another all-time high for the red-hot cryptocurrency. Then a report from the U.S. Labor Department revealed that inflation has yet to fully subside—sending Bitcoin on a downward spiral that it has yet to fully recover from.

BTC dropped as low as $65,848 on Friday morning; it has since recovered to $67,860 at writing, an 8% drop from Thursday’s highs.

That dip was clearly unanticipated by many traders who—amid BTC’s spectacular, record-breaking rally of the last couple weeks—bet hundreds of millions of dollars on the coin continuing to go up in price.

Over $200 million dollars worth of BTC long positions have been liquidated in the last 24 hours alone, according to data from CoinGlass. Over $70 million short positions of the world’s top cryptocurrency have also been liquidated in the same period.  

While Bitcoin-related liquidations constituted over a third of all such transactions in the crypto market, many other coins have felt the heat in the last day, following similar trends. 

Ethereum plummeted about 8% off yesterday’s dim inflation news, to $3,701 at writing. In a trend parallel to that of BTC, more than $100 million worth of ETH long positions were liquidated in the aftermath, along with over $30 million worth of short positions on the token.

The other tokens most bloodied by yesterday’s sudden price dip include Solana and Dogecoin, which saw over $40 million and $18 million worth of liquidations, respectively.

Though the vast majority of cryptocurrencies saw most of their liquidations come from long positions, Solana was the rare exception to buck that trend—with SOL long and short liquidations in the last 24 hours almost equally split at roughly $20 million each.

Edited by Andrew Hayward