Bitcoin, Ether price slump leads to crypto bloodbath with $1B in liquidations

The Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) price slump on Aug .18 saw the top two cryptocurrencies fall to a 2-month low and triggered a series of liquidations for thousands of derivative traders.

The crypto bloodbath led to billions of dollars worth of hedged positions being liquidated and several traders lost millions of dollars in a single trade.

According to Coinglass data, a total of 176,752 traders got liquidated over the past 24 hours. 90% of these liquidations took place within the last 12 hours, indicating a rapid rise in price volatility just days after BTC and ETH recorded their lowest daily volatility in several years.

Crypto market liquidation data. Source: Coinglass

Among a sea of traders that lost a significant chunk of their derivative positions, two particular liquidations caught the crypto community’s eye for the sheer scale of it. During the price slump, an investor on Binance’s ETHBUSD contract was liquidated at $1,434.37 losing $55.9211 million, making it the largest liquidation for the day. Another Binance trader on the BTCUSDT contract lost nearly $10 million in liquidations.

Related: Bitcoin speculators now own the least BTC since $69K all-time highs

The billion-dollar liquidation is the biggest liquidation event in crypto in the past 8 months, after the last such event during the FTX collapse.

Biggest liquidation event of 2023. Source: TradingView

The price function in the crypto market was attributed to several factors including the SpaceX Bitcoin write down, the macroeconomics, where BTC and ETH have been trading in a range for the past couple of months.

BTC held onto the key $28,000 support for a couple of months while ETH held the $1,500 support before giving in yesterday. The liquidity in the crypto market has been on the lower side, and prominent crypto exchanges like Coinbase had seen a significant decline in their trading volume.

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