Traders unload $410m in Bitcoin futures longs in an hour

On February 22, the liquidations of long positions in Bitcoin futures over one hour amounted to $410 million, as the price of the first cryptocurrency fell sharply. Almost $240 million were on Binance.

About $410 million in liquidations on this dump in the last hour. $240M came from Binance itself pic.twitter.com/00pRTVyDoc

— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) February 22, 2021

According to analytics platform Bybt, in the last 24 hours traders closed positions totaling more than $750 million. This figure could be the third-largest of the year to date. Only January 3 and January 10 were higher, at $1.36 billion and $1.8 billion respectively.

Dynamics of Bitcoin futures liquidations on crypto-derivative platforms. Data: Bybt.

On February 20, the price surpassed the level of $57 000. The next day a new all-time high was set at $58,350 (Bitstamp).

As of writing, the price had fallen below $53,000. According to CoinGecko, in the last 24 hours Bitcoin’s decline stands at 7.6%. Bitcoin’s capitalization has fallen below $1 trillion.

Some users were not surprised by the turn of events, given that leverage volumes rose by about 50% over the past two weeks.

That was expected, retail’s leverage increased almost by 50% in the last two weeks (ByBit exchange as a reference) pic.twitter.com/Ru7JJQhUga

— Max N (@greyswan_) February 22, 2021

Analyst Michaël van de Poppe urged that the recent price moves be viewed as a healthy reset, arguing it is organic after the continuous growth in the previous days.

This is not a bear market, just a healthy reset of the markets and actually quite organic for the contiuous growth of the #crypto markets.

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) February 22, 2021

Crypto trader going by the alias Bitcoin Jack believes that at this stage Bitcoin could correct by more than 20% in a day and reach a new all-time high by the end of the week.

At this stage bitcoin can correct over 20% in a day and be at new ATH end of week

— //Bitcoin ack (@BTC_JackSparrow) February 22, 2021

Update: liquidations across all crypto derivatives reached a year-to-date high of $3.5 billion. At one point Bitcoin traded down to $47,500. Ethereum price slipped to $1,550. On Kraken, the price of the second-largest cryptocurrency fell to $700.

Dynamics of futures liquidations on crypto-derivative platforms. Data: Bybt.

Earlier, Glassnode co-founders warned of the possibility of mass sell-offs due to the growth in the number of coins held by short-term investors.

In early December, Rafael Schulte-Kraft, the chief technical officer of the analytics service, suggested the price of Bitcoin could exceed $200,000.

Earlier, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk joined the new trend, having set in his Twitter profile an image of an anime girl with glowing red eyes and the logo of the first cryptocurrency in the background.

Subscribe to ForkLog’s channel on YouTube!