Crypto Market Downturn Forces Nearly $2 Billion in Liquidations
2 min readAfter Bitcoin climbed to a new all-time high just under $50,000 on Feb. 14, a sharp correction caused problems for many optimistic crypto traders.
According to CoinGecko data, Bitcoin made another new all-time high of $49,531 in the late hours of Feb. 14. With the magical $50,000 milestone closer than ever, excited crypto traders went in heavy on long positions.
The market had other plans, however. As Bitcoin fell back to a local low of under $46,000 in the early hours of Feb. 15, the entire crypto market cap saw $1 billion wiped away.
This downturn acted to liquidate many over-leveraged long positions. Data from Bybt is showing that in the last 24 hours, $1.89 billion in losses were incurred.
Bitcoin and Ethereum made up the bulk of the liquidations as per usual, totaling over $9 million between the two.
It also seems that XRP traders were caught off guard. XRP had been steadily climbing its way back up after losing 50% following the announcement of an SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs. Traders lost nearly $100 million betting on a continued revival.
Other notable losses include EOS, Litecoin (LTC), and Cardano (ADA), all of which have enjoyed recent spikes to multi-year highs. Each saw more than $50 million in liquidated losses.
This marks the third-highest figure for liquidations since the beginning of 2021. On Jan. 10, long traders were squeezed for $2.5 billion after Bitcoin fell from $41,000 to $30,000. This was also on the same day that Ethereum fell from a then-all-time-high of $1,350 back to $900.
It appears that the bleeding has paused for the time being. At the time of press, Bitcoin had recovered slightly and is back to trading at the $47,400 level.
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