Bitcoin tanks, altcoins bleed: Nearly $2 billion wiped out in liquidation frenzy

The global digital assets market dropped by over 5% as Bitcoin (BTC) saw a heavy sell-off in the last 24 hours. After surging post-election to a record $103,800, Bitcoin has struggled to hold six-figure levels while the crypto market shed around $200 billion overnight.

The downturn was not exclusive to BTC as smaller tokens also nosedived by up to 15%, marking one of the year’s steepest intraday losses. The fear and greed index still depicts “Extreme Greed” as the cumulative crypto market cap stands at $3.46 trillion with a trading volume of $350 billion. 

Macro fears meet BTC chaos

Data provided by Coinglass shows that more than 580k traders were liquidated in the last 24 hours. The total liquidation came in at $1.76 billion, with the largest single liquidated position of $19.69 million in ETH/USDT recorded on Binance.

Over $1.6 billion worth of liquidated positions (90%) were long bets, which is a reflection of investors’ hopes for the bullish run to continue.

The market retraction comes ahead of the upcoming US inflation data. Fears from potential macroeconomic scenarios and BTC’s latest swing come together to form the perfect storm for traders.

Bitcoin price dropped by over 4%, hitting the lower $95,000 zone and causing panic in the market. Data shows that more than $178 million worth of long and short bets got liquidated in the last 24 hours. Over $142 million worth of liquidations (80%) turned out to be long bets. This shows that traders were very much hopeful for BTC’s bullish rally to continue but the bears had different plans.

BTC is still up by 120% on the year-to-date (YTD) basis and is trading at an average price of $97,455 as of press time. Its 24-hour trading volume stands at $116.2 billion.

Trump-led rally vanishing?

Speculation after Donald Trump’s pro-crypto agenda won him the US elections fueled a boom, but notorious crypto swings have led to rapid exits. Trump’s crypto pivot has excited investors with $10 billion flowing into US spot-Bitcoin ETFs since his election. 

Ripple’s XRP was one of the biggest losers of the day. After witnessing a solid upward run, XRP price dropped by over 10% in the last 24 hours, and it is down by 18% over the last 7 days. XRP is trading at an average price of $2.24 as of press time.

Meme tokens like Dogecoin (DOGE) and smaller assets have struggled even worse, which may indicate the sector’s broad-based weakness. DOGE price went down by 6% while SHIB recorded a drop of 12% in the last 24 hours.

Critics have highlighted the risks of wider crypto adoption under Trump, including market manipulation and regulatory uncertainty. 

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