Another $438M In Crypto Longs Gone As Bitcoin, Altcoins Pull Back

Data shows cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges have racked up liquidations as Bitcoin and other assets have gone through a price retrace.

According to data from CoinGlass, a massive amount of liquidations have piled up on digital asset derivatives platforms following the latest market volatility. “Liquidation” refers to the forceful closure that any open contract undergoes after it has incurred a loss of a specific degree (as defined by the exchange).

Fast, violent moves tend to catch a large number of contracts off guard at once, so mass liquidation events tend to accompany them. The same has been the case with the volatility shown by Bitcoin and the company during the past day.

As the table below shows, about $507 million in derivatives contracts have been liquidated over the last 24 hours.

$438 million or 86% of the liquidations involved long contracts. This overwhelming majority in the leverage flush from the bullish bets is naturally because of the fact that the sharpest move inside this window was one to the downside. Bitcoin went from $67,700 to a low of $64,300 within the matter of a few hours. As the market has rebounded since this plunge, some short investors have also been liquidated, with their 24-hour liquidation figure sitting at $69 million.

In terms of the individual assets, Bitcoin was once again the biggest contributor to the derivatives flush, with $233 million in contracts involved. Below is a heatmap that shows how liquidations have looked for the other coins.

On-chain analytics firm Santiment has made an X post discussing the volatility, noting that it has caused a drop in the Bitcoin Open Interest. This indicator measures the total amount of positions related to BTC (in USD) that are currently open on all derivatives exchanges.

As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin Open Interest plunged to $19.5 billion following the event, which is about half the level that the metric was at during the January peak of $38.3 billion. The indicator’s decline signifies a mix of liquidations and investors choosing to pull back on risk.

In the same chart, Santiment has also attached the data for the Negative Sentiment, a metric that tracks the degree of bearish sentiment around BTC on the major social media platforms. This indicator has shot up alongside the price decline and hit a two-week high, implying a spike in FUD among retail investors.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $66,300, down nearly 5% over the past week.