Liquidations Cross $200 Million Following Bitcoin’s Rise Above $19,000

The last 24 hours have been filled with twists and turn for the crypto market but one thing that is important is that bitcoin crossed $19,000. This would be the first time that the digital asset would be reaching this price since the FTX collapse triggered another market downturn. However, as always, such sudden movements in the market would lead to liquidations, and traders are feeling the heat.

Over the last day, liquidations have ramped up, seeing more than $200 million in losses for traders. This was a result of the bounce following the CPI data release, and then the subsequent corrections which happened just as fast.

Since the CPI data had come in exactly as expected at 6.5%, it meant that there was a flush between shorts and longs, and this flush is also present in the ratio of liquidations. Data from Coinglass shows that while short traders are still suffering the most losses, the gap with longs is not that wide as shorts made up 58% of the losses.

Still, this is significant in the market and if bitcoin were to continue its upward rally, then it is likely that the gap between long and short losses would become much wider. 

It is also important to note that most of the liquidations actually happened on Thursday, only a couple of hours after the CPI release. Over 39,000 traders have seen their positions liquidated with the largest single liquidation event happening on the ETH-USDT-SWAP on the OKX exchange.

On a 24-hour period, the bitcoin liquidations have surpassed that of Ethereum but ever so slightly. Where 4,230 BTC have been liquidated, culminating in a total loss of $79.56 million over the time period, 51,000 ETH has been liquidation, worth $71.79 million.

As the bitcoin price looks to have settled into support above $18,000 over the last 12 hours, ETH liquidations have taken the lead with $9.08 million lost so far compared to BTC’s $8.23 million for the same time period. There have been more swings in ETH’s price during this time, which is the driving force behind more liquidations.

Since bitcoin has now moved above its 50-day moving average but continues to struggle with its 100-day MA, there could be some more wild swings to come before the crypto market finally settles. From here, it is likely to be an upward swing before a correction back into the $17,000 territory.

BTC is currently trading at $18,800 at the time of this writing. Its up 4% in the last 24 hours and 12.12% in seven days.