$127 Million In Bitcoin And Ethereum Positions Liquidated Amid Market Drop

Data shows that over the past 24 hours, more than $127 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum futures have been liquidated. The price of both cryptos has decreased by 6% and 7%, respectively, wiping out the recent gain.

According to Coinglass statistics, Bitcoin futures alone lost $57.78 million, implying that most trading activity and open interest were restricted by market capitalization to the most prominent cryptocurrency. However, Ethereum futures suffered a $64 million loss. 

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Liquidations occur when an exchange closes a leveraged position for a safety mechanism. It happens because of a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin. That happens primarily in futures trading. That only tracks asset prices instead of spot trading, where traders own the actual assets.

As per CoinMarketCap statistics, Bitcoin is currently down 5.85% on the day. It also means that the major cryptocurrency with a market value of $563.33 billion is down 57.06% from its all-time high of $68,789.63.

Likewise, Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, is now down 64.02% from its all-time high of $4,891.70 reached in November 2021. Nevertheless, ETH is struggling to keep its recent positive momentum going.

BTC’s price currently fluctuates around $29,912.29  | Source: BTC/USD price chart from TradingView.com
Feasible Reasons Behind Bitcoin & Ethereum Crash

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index is a way of gauging market activity and determining if the price of cryptocurrencies are priced fairly. According to the Fear & Greed Index, the score is down (15 out of 100), implying that the market is experiencing “extreme fear.”

First, there has been a decrease in Ethereum and Bitcoin trading activity. According to data from DefiLlama, the Total Value Locked (TVL) across multiple protocols in Ethereum has dropped from $88.67 billion to $68.02 billion in the last 24 hours.

The flow of Bitcoin to crypto exchanges is down 37.4%, indicating lower demand for BTC among investors, as per the data from Chainalysis indicates.

DeFi Protocols On Ethereum

TVL, or Total Value Locked, on Aave, the largest decentralized finance protocol on Ethereum, lost 15% of its value over the past month. Other blue-chip projects like Curve Finance, MakerDAO, Lido, and Uniswap also lost double-digits of TVL over the same period.

  Related Reading | Polygon (MATIC) Price Falls Short Of Reaching Full Potential Despite Recent Developments

Ethereum is still the most popular blockchain for decentralized applications (defi), with 55.59% of the total defi TVL. This is due to the $101.32 billion worth of value locked in on the ETH chain. Terra is second in terms of market share, with 12.86% and $23.44 billion locked in on its blockchain. Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has 6.37% of the total defi TVL, or $11.6 billion today.

   Featured image from Flickr and chart from TradingView.com