USD 2.7B Liquidated in One Hour as Volatility Hits Crypto Markets

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Fredrik Vold

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Fredrik Vold

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October 23, 2023 09:37 EDT

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The crypto markets got hit with a new round of selling Tuesday afternoon (as of 15:21 UTC), as bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and many altcoins fell by double-digit percentages in less than two hours.

At press time, bitcoin was down by 8.7% over the past 24 hours, and traded at USD 46.2k, per CoinGecko’s price data. However, that’s still up significantly from the low of just over USD 42,900 that was seen on Binance earlier in the selloff, and the USD 42,850 seen on Coinbase.

The sharp moves lower also led to large liquidations on derivatives exchanges, with more than USD 2.7b liquidated in just one hour across all exchanges and trading pairs, per data from Bybt.com.

Looking at data from Skew, massive liquidations of overleveraged positions could also be seen in the bitcoin market, with more than USD 750m liquidated in one hour for bitcoin alone.

Leveraged trading refers to borrowing funds so that you can take a larger position than you would be able to with your existing funds so that you can potentially generate a higher profit. However, while margin trading enables traders to amplify their returns, it can also lead to increased losses and liquidations, which is why experienced traders tend to advise newcomers to stay away from leveraged trading.

Despite derivatives trades getting rekt, however, El Salvador’s president and bitcoin proponent Nayib Bukele wrote on Twitter that his country is “buying the dip”:

Buying the dip 😉

150 new coins added.#BitcoinDay #BTC🇸🇻

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) September 7, 2021

Other reactions:

Binance down, Kraken down, Binance down – Yeah, yeah, OK, what's new?
Bitfinex down – wow, that's rare!

— Joe007 has nothing to teach you💀 (@J0E007) September 7, 2021

crypto market just casually shedding 15% on a tuesday

yeet

— Meltem Demirors (@Melt_Dem) September 7, 2021

Mean reversion after that move was almost guaranteed, literally every swing low got taken out since mid August

— Nik (@cointradernik) September 7, 2021

If you didn't expect a dooomp today then welcome to bitcoin

— TK (@TiKawamoto) September 7, 2021

If we close today above $47k after taking out all those lows, daily market structure is still looking good and I’d expect us to just continue higher towards $56k over the next couple of weeks. Close below and I’m looking at $41.5k as the next area to look for longs.

— Nik (@cointradernik) September 7, 2021

More than $2.6 billion worth of positions liquidated in the last hour. Most on Bybit as usual. $1.1B in BTC, $700M in ETH. If you ask me, a perfectly healthy leverage flush. Funding rates on alts were spiking too much pic.twitter.com/cvwPo4W0GD

— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) September 7, 2021

#Bitcoin lost that $49K level as crucial support and smacked through it.

What just happened?

Overleveraged positions getting liquidated in a chain reaction, causing a massive wick.

If this wick closes above $47/48K, it will be an outlier.

Opportunities.

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) September 7, 2021

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Learn more:
Regulators Take Notice as Bragging Crypto Derivatives Traders Get Caught 
Crypto Exchange Self-Regulation Kicks In as Regulators Start to Kick 
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(Updated at 15:57 UTC with a paragraph about the leveraged trading.)