Bitcoin has just fallen back below $69,000, after dropping more than 7%. At the same time, the cryptocurrency market has recorded $1.63 billion in liquidations over 24 hours. Here’s a look at the situation…
Bitcoin Falls Back Below $69,000
After Bitcoin finally seemed to have held above $75,000 since the end of August, it has continued to fall below that level ever since breaking through this support at the end of last week. It is now trading below $69,000 at the time of writing.
The drop of more than 7% recorded over 24 hours further worsens its poor performance this year: the decline is now estimated at 21.5% since the beginning of January and more than 30% over the past 12 months.
As is often the case in this type of scenario, liquidations are surging in the crypto derivatives market. They are currently estimated at $1.63 billion over 24 hours, and nearly 90% involve positions betting on prices rising (long positions).
According to data from Coinglass, this latest wave of liquidations reportedly affected a total of 185556 traders over the period. The largest loss was recorded on the Hyperliquid platform: $31.01 million on a BTC/USD position.
As often happens, Bitcoin leads liquidations by a wide margin, with $909 million. Ethereum follows with $385.4 million, ahead of Solana, at $57.5 million.
Possible causes of this decline
This sharp drop in Bitcoin could be partly explained by the risk that the US Federal Reserve (Fed) will raise rates by 50 basis points in December, instead of the 25 points expected. Such a decision could put further pressure on a cryptocurrency market that is already under strain.
Some analysts believe, however, that this decline could also be a side effect of the scandal that has just hit Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. The company’s market capitalization has lost nearly $2 trillion in recent days, and the price of BTC remains closely linked to technology stocks.
📰 Jensen Huang Leaves Nvidia Leadership, Shares Plunge
Finally, the recent confirmation that Strategy will be excluded from MSCI indexes could also explain some additional caution among investors, as the BTC market begins to confuse a correction phase with a downward trend.
