It was a sea of red in the cryptocurrency space that has seen 103,518 traders having their accounts liquidated as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies sell-off, a day after the United States Federal Reserve handed down its policy decision to increase interest rate by half a percentage point.
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. It happens when a trader is unable to meet the margin requirements for a leveraged position (fails to have sufficient funds to keep the trade open). Liquidation occurs in both margin and futures trading.
The total liquidations from these traders amounted to a total of $403.42 million, with longs accounting for $344.52 million or 85.40% of the total liquidations. The shorts accounted for the rest of the total amount ($58.9 million).
What you should know
Flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin lost almost $4,000 in less than 12 hours, from a little above $39,600, to trade as low as $35,850 in the Asian session today. This represents a decline of approximately 10%.
The entire cryptocurrency market capitalization also fell. The market cap fell below the $1.7 trillion support to currently stand at $1.64 trillion as of the time of this writing.
The Fed hiked its interest rate to 1%, the largest increase since 2000, as it handed down its policy decision on Wednesday.
We are currently seeing the effects of the policy decision made by the federal reserve. The U.S. Fed increase in the interest rate brought about a strong dollar index (a measure of the strength of the U.S. dollar).
As of the time of this writing, the dollar index is trading at a 20 year high, currently above 104 basis points.
When Bitcoin sneezes, the altcoins catch a cold and this was exactly what played out yesterday. We saw a massive sell-off in the altcoin market, with many tokens losing 5% and more.
In fact the selloff saw DOT and AVAX lose their top 10 status, as they have been overtaken by stablecoin’s UST and BUSD.
Okex exchange accounted for the most liquidation, representing $161.95 million or 40.14% of the total liquidations. Binance came in second, accounting for $104.94 million which represents 26.01%.
Bitcoin liquidations accounted for the most as expected, representing $191.19 million or 47.40% of the total liquidations in the last 24 hours. Ether came in second, accounting for $64.79 million and in third place, APE, accounted for $11.43 million.
nairametrics.com/2022/05/06/over-100000-traders-lose-403-million-as-bitcoin-falls-below-36000/
