Tech
Bitcoin Plunges to $64K as US Tech Rout Hits Crypto, Leading to Liquidation of $250M Long Bets
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Bitcoin saw a sharp decline of more than 3% in early Asian trading amid a broader stock market downturn.
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More than $250 million in bullish bets were wiped out, marking the largest liquidation since early July.
Bitcoin {{BTC}} tumbled more than 3% in early Asian trading, amid a broader stock market slump and weakening sentiment around risk assets like cryptocurrencies.
BTC fell from over $65,500 to nearly $64,000 in a matter of minutes as Tokyo opened trading. The sudden plunge led to the liquidation of over $250 million in bullish bets, the worst since early July.
Liquidations occur when an exchange forcibly closes a trader’s leveraged position due to a partial or complete loss of the trader’s initial margin. Such data is useful to traders as it serves as a signal of effective leverage being eliminated from popular futures products, serving as a short-term indication of a decline in price volatility.
The CoinDesk 20 (broad-based)CD20), a liquid index that tracks the largest tokens by market cap, excluding stablecoins, fell 3.3%.
Ether {{ETH}} longs lost the most, settling at $100 million, as the token plunged 7.5% due to outflows from the newly launched ETH ETF.
Binance saw the highest liquidations among exchanges at $118 million, of which 88% were long trades. OKX and Huobi, popular among Asia-based traders, saw up to 94% of open long traders on their exchanges liquidated.
The plunge came as U.S. technology stocks took a beating on Wednesday, sending the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index down 660 points, its biggest drop since 2022.
Mixed quarterly earnings from Google parent Alphabet (GOOG) and Tesla (TSLA) saw the companies’ shares close as low as 12% on Wednesday; overall, the so-called “Magnificent 7” tech stocks lost more than $750 billion in market capitalization on Wednesday, the largest loss ever for the group.
Losses extended to Asian markets on Thursday morning, as Japan’s Nikkei 225 plunged more than 3%. among the worries that the Bank of Japan might raise interest rates.