$300M in Longs Liquidated in 1 Hour: Bitcoin Crashes, Ethereum Rejected at $5K

The entire cryptocurrency market headed straight south on Sunday evening, led by a massive price drop from the largest of the bunch.

Bitcoin’s price had calmed at around $115,000 all day with little to no moves in either direction, but suddenly plunged to its lowest price level since July 10.

BTCUSD. Source: TradingView

Recall that the primary cryptocurrency skyrocketed on Friday after Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s somewhat optimistic speech about upcoming interest rate cuts. The asset went from under $112,000, which was a local low at the time, to over $117,000 within an hour or so.

However, that relief rally was short-lived, and BTC quickly retraced to around $115,000, where it spent most of the weekend. Less than an hour ago, though, the bears unexpectedly reemerged by pushing BTC to a six-week low of $110,600 (on most exchanges).

Bitcoin recovered two grand since then, but still trades below $113,000. It took most altcoins south with it, including ETH, which was flying high.

In fact, the second-largest cryptocurrency just painted a new all-time high of almost $5,000. As the community was anticipating a breakthrough above that milestone, though, ETH plummeted to nearly $4,700 before recovering to around $4,800 as of press time.

Most altcoins charted similar volatile price moves over the past hour, which has harmed over-leveraged traders. Data from CoinGlass shows that the hourly liquidations have shot up to well over $300 million, with longs responsible for roughly 90% of the entire amount.

The wrecked positions on a daily scale are almost double that size, with over 130,000 traders liquidated. The single-largest wrecked position took place on OKX and was worth north of $12 million.

Liquidation Heat Map. Source: CoinGlass