Bitcoin Spot ETF: SEC Mishap Triggers $220 Million In Crypto Liquidations

On Tuesday, the crypto market was taken by storm when a tweet emerged from the official X (formerly Twitter) account of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) saying all Spot Bitcoin ETF applications had been approved. This had been initially followed by a surge in price but this was short-lived as the price would crash shortly after. The reason for this was because Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commission, revealed that the tweet was fake and the regulator’s social media account had been compromised.

In the wake of the wild Bitcoin price fluctuations that were triggered by the SEC’s hack, a large number of crypto traders found themselves with massive losses on their hands. According to data from CoinGlass, over $220 million have been liquidated in the last 24 hours, leading to the second-largest liquidation event so far in 2024.

The website also notes that over 70,000 traders were victims of this liquidation event as well. Also, given that the price of Bitcoin and other assets in the crypto market had seen price fluctuations in both directions, both long and short traders were affected.

However, given that the crash to the downside has persisted for longer, long traders have come out as the group with the most liquidations during this time. Out of the more than $220 million in liquidations recorded, long trades made up 60.47% with $133.5 million, while the volume of short liquidations came out to $87.29 million for the same time period.

Bitcoin saw the largest single liquidation order during this time as well which took place on the ByBit exchange. A single trade worth $6 million was liquidated across the BTCUSD trading pair, with total liquidations on the crypto exchange coming out to $36.66 million. This falls behind market leader Binance with $83.88 million and OKX with $73.97 million.

The debate of whether the Spot Bitcoin ETF approval has already been priced in and if an announcement will lead to a decline in price has been waxing stronger over the last few weeks. Experts have chimed in to give their thoughts on what will follow an approval.

Crypto analyst Andrew Kang believes that approval would lead to a scramble among applicants to grab as much as possible from the $10 billion to $20 billion expected to come from fees. As such, they will all be at the forefront of marketing to push their ETFs.

On the flip side, renowned economist, Peter Schiff, believes that a spot ETF would actually not be good for the asset. Apparently, the advent of a spot Bitcoin ETF would mean that there is no longer any good news to trigger a price rally. As such, it would turn into a ‘sell the news’ event.

However, if the performance from Tuesday is anything to go by, it could mean that the ETF is already priced in given that there was a decline in price, even before the SEC dismissed the tweet from the hacked account.