Bitcoin Bulls Crushed: Sub-$70,000 Crash Flushes $428M In Longs

Data shows bullish bets related to Bitcoin have suffered a massive amount of liquidations as the asset’s price has plunged below the $70,000 mark.

Following up on the bearish tone set during the second half of May, Bitcoin has opened June with another drawdown as its price has slipped under $70,000 for the first time since April 7th.

Below is a chart that shows how the latest bearish action has looked for the cryptocurrency.

Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin has gone down by nearly 5%, hitting the $69,400 mark. Interestingly, while the original digital asset has suffered this blow, Ethereum, the second-largest token by market cap, has managed to hold up relatively well, being down by just 0.7% inside this window. Even many altcoins have seen smaller losses than BTC.

The reason behind the disproportionate decline in Bitcoin may lie in the fact that its bearish action was triggered at least in part by a rare sale from Strategy, the largest treasury holder of the asset. Meanwhile, Bitmine, the Strategy-equivalent for Ethereum, announced another acquisition instead.

As BTC’s drop during the past day has been significant, it has caught out a significant number of traders on the derivatives market.

According to data from CoinGlass, a notable amount of liquidations related to Bitcoin have racked up on centralized exchanges over the last 24 hours. “Liquidation” here refers to the forceful closure that any open contract undergoes after it has amassed a certain percentage in losses (as defined by the specific platform).

As displayed in the below table, total liquidations related to the digital asset sector have broken the $800 million mark.

Out of these, more than $689 million in contracts involved were long positions. In percentage terms, this figure is equivalent to more than 85%. This dominance of bullish liquidations naturally makes sense in the context of the decline that the market has faced during the past day.

As Bitcoin was struck particularly hard inside this window, it was by far the biggest contributor to the liquidations.

From the above heatmap, it’s visible that a total of $445 million in BTC contracts were liquidated in the last 24 hours. The share of long liquidations was notably higher than the average for the wider sector, with more than 95% of contracts involved being bullish bets.

While Ethereum’s price action has been relatively flat, it still ended up garnering $91 million in liquidations, the second-most behind Bitcoin.