by Cynthia Ezirim 
Bitcoin’s sudden decline during the Tuesday morning Asian trading session caused over $465 million in liquidations on multiple centralized crypto exchanges.
In the early hours of Tuesday, bitcoin (BTC) witnessed a sharp plunge that sent its price to a level not seen in the past nine days. The digital asset fell by more than 5% from $70,000 to $66,000.
An analysis from crypto trading firm QCP Capital revealed that the speed of bitcoin’s fall was driven by large liquidations on big centralized exchanges like Binance, which have heavy retail activity.
Bitcoin’s Fall to $66K
QCP Capital said the crypto options market gave an early signal about a sharp downside move, particularly for risk reversals. The plunge caused perpetual funding rates to fall flat from 77%, bringing spot prices back to the $60,000-$72,000 range.
“BTC broke 70k and traded below 66k. ETH traded to 3320 lows. The move brings spot prices right back into the middle of the 60-72k range. While perp funding has compressed, the rest of the forward curve remains very elevated. Will this be the move that brings the whole curve back down?” QCP Capital speculated.
Bitcoin’s sudden decline during the Tuesday morning Asian trading session caused over $465 million in liquidations on multiple centralized crypto exchanges. The fall was not peculiar to BTC alone as several altcoins, including ether (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) also moved southward. Even memecoins were caught in the wave, with Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) losing over 5% of their respective values.
Around $349 million of liquidations came from long positions, while the rest were traced to short traders. Data from CoinGlass showed that out of the 133,000 traders liquidated in the last 24 hours, the largest single liquidation occurred on crypto exchange OKX, an ETH-USD-SWAP valued at $7.48 million.
Over $460M in Liquidations
Bitcoin bore the brunt of the liquidations, with long and short traders recording losses of $107 million and $55 million, respectively. Ether followed closely with losses hovering around $85 million and $30 million for long and short positions. DOGE came next, followed by SOL and XRP, with losses totaling $14.5 million, $13 million, and $4.5 million, respectively.
In other news, crypto investment funds witnessed more than $862 million in inflows last week, erasing a huge portion of the previous week’s outflow of $931 million.
