The crypto market recently saw a downturn that caused $120 billion to be taken off the total market cap in the space of a day. This obviously had caused panic across the market, triggering sell-offs from investors who were trying to save themselves from more losses. However, more than 110k traders would record hundreds of millions of dollars in losses as the downtrend had caused a cascading liquidation event.
Traders Lose $430 Million
The crypto market has recorded one of the largest liquidation events of 2022. On Thursday, the price of bitcoin had fallen below $37,000 hot to the news of interest rates being increased by 50 basis points in the just concluded FOMC meeting. This would be the beginning of a long day for crypto traders who had seen their trades liquidated into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Mainly, the liquidations were long liquidations from traders who had placed their bets on the optimistic future price of various cryptocurrencies. The market would continue to tumble and the liquidations would continue to leave ripples in the market. In total, there has been more than $430 million in liquidations in the last 24 hours alone.
Crypto liqudaitions surpass $430 million | Source: Coinglass
Naturally, bitcoin led the market with its liquidations. The pioneer cryptocurrency which is favored by traders for being the market leader saw traders liquidated to the tune of more than $200 million in the span of a day. Long liquidations made up about 70% although short traders were not left out of the onslaught.
On the altcoin front, Ethereum led the pack with $69 million in liquidations. However, there were some other significant players in the space who had seen traders rekt beyond expectations.
GMT and APE, two coins that had been on the rise lately both saw more than $12 million dollars in liquidations respectively. Some might argue that they had seen the liquidations in APE coming due to the hype that had followed billionaire Elon Musk changing his Twitter profile picture to BAYC avatars.
Crypto market cap loses $120B | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap on TradingView.com
Nevertheless, it remains a sad day for the market. Sentiment has now fallen into the extreme fear territory leading to incredibly low momentum in the market. More notably is the fact that bitcoin now lies dangerously low on the $36,000-$38,000 support level.
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This point remains crucial for bulls to hold the digital asset above as a fall below $36,000 will likely set the digital asset on a path below $30,000. If this happens, bitcoin being a market leader will certainly pull the rest of the market down with it, which could see long liquidations of historical proportions rock the market.
Featured image from Physics World, chart from TradingView.com
