The cryptocurrency market saw over $665 million liquidations in the past 24 hours as bitcoin faces heavy selling pressure with Mt Gox continuing to make movements for payout.
Bitcoin dropped 7.4% in the past 24 hours to $54,422 at the time of publication, according to The Block’s bitcoin price page. The price fall came after defunct crypto exchange moved about $2.7 billion worth of bitcoin as it prepares for its payout to creditors, set to start early this month.
In the past 24 hours, a total of 230,541 traders were liquidated, with the total liquidations across centralized exchanges amounting to $665.8 million, according to data from Coinglass.
Bitcoin was the leading cryptocurrency in the liquidations, with over $222.1 million liquidated in the past 24 hours. Among these bitcoin liquidations, about $181.8 million of them were long positions.
Ether also faced significant liquidations, with $163.4 million liquidated, of which $143.3 million were long positions, the data showed. The price of ether fell 10.57% in the last 24 hours to $2,890, according to The Block’s price page.
Crypto liquidations occur when a trader’s positions in the cryptocurrency market are forcibly closed due to significant losses or a lack of sufficient margin to meet the maintenance requirements.
On Thursday night, Mt Gox moved 47,228.7 BTC ($2.71 billion) to a wallet address, which soon sent back 2,702 BTC and transferred 44,527 BTC to another address, according to data from blockchain tracker Arkham. A few hours later, another address related to Mt Gox moved 1,545 BTC ($85 million) to a hot wallet on Bitbank, Arkham data showed.
Peter Chung, head of research at Presto Research, said that the selling pressure may be stronger for BCH than BTC, “given BCH doesn’t have a strong investor base like BTC, so the [Mt Gox] creditors will probably seek to cash out immediately just like any other airdrop.”
“Volatility and periods of selling do not change Bitcoin’s core thesis,” Ben Caselin, chief marketing officer of VALR, a Pantera-backed crypto exchange, told The Block. “With any luck, we can expect prices in the lower 50,000s or even slightly lower for weeks… but nothing fundamental has changed about the market structure and current price movements are really only a concern to short-term speculators.”
