Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin has seen a drastic decline in price. The digital asset’s value fell by over $1,200 in the space of one hour, dragging it back down to the $21,000 territory for the first time in almost one month. As a result, liquidations across the market ramped up quickly, crossing $200 million in less than 12 hours.
Long Traders Get The ‘Short’ End Of The Stick
Bitcoin was trending at $23,300 for the better part of Thursday before the bears’ reclaimed control of the market. It was especially brutal given the uncertainty of the market and buying pressure dropping significantly over the past week.
With bitcoin’s decline to $21,900 and then subsequently increase to $22,400, over 80,000 crypto traders suffered liquidations. In just 24 hours, liquidation volumes crossed $215 million and by the 24-hour mark, the figure was sitting above $242 million, data from Coinglass shows.
Crypto liquidations cross $242 million | Source: Coinglass
The majority of liquidations were for bitcoin which saw a liquidation volume of $84 million. This is understandable given the Thursday decline was the most prominent in BTC, so the losses quickly followed. It made for the second-largest single liquidation event in 2023 so far, only behind the February 9 decline that saw over $254 million liquidated.
Long traders were hit the most as 91.9% of all liquidations were from long positions. However, over the last four hours, it has started to skew against short traders who are now seeing more losses due to bitcoin retaking the $22,400 level.
The single largest liquidation order was recorded on the OKX exchange. The $4.2 million order was placed across the BTC-USDT-SWAP pair on the exchange.
Bitcoin Not Looking Good For Recovery
As the hours have passed following Bitcoin’s price decline, the digital asset has not shown any indication of recovery. It is still sitting in the low $22,000s, which still puts it above its 50-day moving average, but there is no guarantee that it will keep holding this level.
BTC price falls to $22,300 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
If bitcoin were to fall below $22,000 again, then $21,000 is the next possible strong support. This means that BTC needs to hold its current level or move above it at least, to go into the weekend with at least some level of momentum, or else, the low liquidity usually associated with weekends will easily pull the price further down.
At the time of writing, BTC is changing hands at a price of $22,330. It is down 4.48% in the last 24 hours and recorded losses of 6.09% in the last week.