Bitcoin Tumbles Toward $62K as Crypto Bulls See $150M in Liquidation

Major tokens slid as much as 7.5% in the past 24 hours as bitcoin (BTC) reversed last week’s gains causing over $150 million in bullish bets to be liquidated over the weekend.

Bitcoin lost 3%, while ether (ETH), Cardano’s ADA, and BNB Chain’s BNB registered similar losses. Solana’s SOL dropped 7% to trade at nearly $120 on Monday morning, while meme coins dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) dropped nearly 5%.

The CoinDesk 20 (CD20), which tracks major tokens minus stablecoins, slumped just over 4%.

The move caused longs, or bets on higher prices, to record more than $150 million in liquidations. Shorts, or bets against, saw a relatively smaller $9 million in losses. Liquidation refers to when an exchange forcefully closes a trader's leveraged position due to a partial or total loss of the trader's initial margin.

Some funds attributed the losses to large sales from Bitcoin miners and reactive sentiment to a German government moving a significant amount of BTC to exchanges.

“Miners have been under tremendous pressure to sell given higher breakeven prices post-halving,” Singapore-based QCP Capital said in a Telegram broadcast over the weekend. “Miner BTC holdings have dropped to the lowest level we've seen in the past 14 years, with total reserves lower by 50,000 from the start of the year.”

“The market has also been spooked by the emergence of a new large pool of supply. The German government allegedly sold around 3k BTC in the last few days with 47K more to go,” it added.

As previously reported, bitcoin whales—or entities with large holdings of the token—sold over $1 billion worth of BTC in the first two weeks of June alone. The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which had seized almost 50,000 BTC from a piracy site in 2013, started moving tens of millions worth of BTC to crypto exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken last week.

Monday’s drop extends one of bitcoin’s worst weeks so far this year. BTC prices have generally suffered in the past few weeks amid $1 billion in sales from large holders, dollar strength, and a strong U.S. technology index market.

U.S.-listed bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded over $1 billion in net outflows last week, data shows.

UPDATE (June 24, 07:20 UTC): Tweaks headline to add direction of price change.