Bitcoin’s Slump Sees Crypto Bulls Staring at $440M in Liquidations

A brief bitcoin (BTC) slump to under $64,000 caused over $440 million in liquidation for crypto futures traders betting on higher prices. Some traders expect bitcoin to reach the $55,000 level in the short term.

Long bets on bitcoin took on $100 million in losses alone, with ether (ETH), Solana’s SOL and dogecoin (DOGE) taking on a cumulative $120 million in long liquidations, data from Coinglass shows.

Data shows that the most liquidations took place on Binance at $212 million, followed by OKX at $170 million.

Bitcoin started to drop late U.S. hours on Monday amid record high outflows from Grayscale’s GBTC at over $640 million. Inflows to other products were just under $500 million, leaving the market with a net outflow of $15 million on Monday.

Major tokens fell as much as 11% in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows. ETH, SOL and Cardano’s ADA dropped as much as 8%. The broader CoinDesk 20, a gauge of various major tokens minus stablecoins, dropped 8%.

Liquidations occur when an exchange forcefully closes a trader’s leveraged position owing to a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin. They happen when a trader cannot meet the margin requirements for a leveraged position, that is, when they don’t have sufficient funds to keep the trade open.

Meanwhile, some traders said they expected bitcoin to fall to as low as $55,000 in the coming weeks, even as they have a long-term bullish outlook.

“The pace of the recent appreciation makes forecasting when the correction will complete difficult, but I do look for a move lower to $55-$62k before the next leg up,” John Glover, Chief Investment Office at Ledn, told CoinDesk in an email.

“The retail players are just starting to enter the BTC ETFs en masse, and the next big entry is set to coincide with the halving, so things should get interesting in a month or so,” Glover added.