Turmoil as crypto traders lose over $2bn in the past 24 hours

According to data from Coinglass, 287,959 cryptocurrency traders were liquidated in the past 24 hours, following the drop in Bitcoin’s price below $28,000 which dragged along other coins in the market.

Traders are liquidated when over-leveraged and cannot meet margin call requirements due to insufficient balance.

At press time, the total losses from the closed positions reached $2.24 billion. The largest single liquidation order happened on BitFinex – $1.33 billion.

Liquidations:

• BitFinex recorded the total highest liquidation amount at $1.38 billion
• Binance had 267.74 million lost in liquidation
• OKex had $248.37 million in a liquidated position
• FTX traders lost 134.23 million
• Bybit lost $115.23 million 
• Deribit lost 39.64 million
• Huobi – 32.36 million
• Bitmex – 24.35 million

Market overview 

The cryptocurrency market continues its free fall and Bitcoin continues to shed value, dragging along other crypto-assets. 

According to data from Coinmarketcap at press time, the global crypto market cap has sunk 7.09% in the last 24 hours to sit at $1.24 trillion – 60% down from its peak. 

BTC is currently trading at $29,351 after losing the June $28,000 support and dropping as low as $26,700 earlier today which is its lowest price since December 2020. 

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, earlier plummeted to $1,800 before recovering to $2,013.

‘Ethereum competitors’ like Solana, Avalanche, and Polkadot have all tumbled harder. Solana is trading at $47.32, a 45% weekly decrease and now 84% short of its November all-time high.

Avalanche is down 45% in the last 7 days and is trading at $32. Polkadot market value is $8.90, a 39% downturn in the last one week. 

However, no crypto project is in more trouble than Terra Luna. The Layer 1 blockchain is in meltdown mode this week due to its algorithmic stablecoin, UST, losing its peg against the dollar.

$UST is currently worth just $0.386 while the network’s volatile token, $LUNA, is trading at around $0.016.

To understand the extent and significance of the calamity, $LUNA was still trading at $119 on April 5, less than six weeks ago. 

By all accounts and projections, the cryptowinter is upon us. The market is deep into a bear market, and there is no clear sign of brighter skies ahead anytime soon.