Bitcoin Price Volatility Triggers $185 Million in Crypto Liquidations

The price of Bitcoin steadily climbed this morning and tapped the $70,000 mark on Monday—before plunging again below $67,000, in a whiplash morning of price movement that triggered a wave of liquidations across the market.

In the last 24 hours, the cryptocurrency market has seen some $185 million worth of liquidations, according to CoinGlass. The largest source of those losses has been Bitcoin related-positions. In the last four hours alone, some $48 million worth of Bitcoin long positions have been liquidated.

Overall, Bitcoin has not moved much in the last day—the world’s top cryptocurrency is barely down 1% at a current price around $67,200. But the manner in which BTC rose and then crashed appears to have devastated crypto derivatives traders. 

It’s as of yet unclear what prompted Bitcoin to rise and fall so quickly. On Crypto Twitter, users bemoaned the U.S. government’s movement on Monday of over $2 billion in seized BTC connected to the Silk Road dark web marketplace.

The transfer came just two days after former president Donald Trump pledged to prohibit the federal government from selling its crypto, if elected again later this year, and to establish a national “strategic Bitcoin stockpile.” Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis then unveiled her own plan for a national Bitcoin reserve.

Massive BTC transfers of the kind have sent the token plunging in recent weeks, but it’s not clear that Bitcoin’s drop today and the Silk Road transfer are causally connected. Bitcoin began falling around 9:15 am ET on Monday, while the U.S. government did not make its massive Bitcoin transfer until hours later, at 12:18 pm ET, according to on-chain data from Arkham.

Since then, Bitcoin has dropped another 1.35%, falling as low as $66,647 before beginning to recover. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward