- Monday’s crash wiped out more than $470 million in long-term bets
- Over the past four hours, most liquidations were made by traders betting on falling prices
Bitcoin’s price dipped below $40,000 early Tuesday for the first time since March 16 as the market underwent another correction. Altcoins were hit even harder, with many posting steeper declines than on Monday. Leading altcoin Ether fell to a multi-week low of $2,958, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Two contrasting trends
Since then the crypto market has eased slightly, with Bitcoin recovering to around $40,210, where it was last observed trading sideways. Ethereum’s native token has climbed back to about $3,020. This modest rebound produced losses for traders who had been positioned for a continued downtrend.
Data from Coinglass indicate that short-position traders accounted for the bulk of liquidations in the past four hours. On average, shorts contributed 84.72% of total liquidation volume across exchanges during that window. Exchanges such as FTX, Bybit, BitMEX and Bitfinex reported short liquidation shares even higher than this average.
Bitcoin futures traders led the list, suffering $7.20 million in liquidations over the last four hours. Ethereum (ETH) and Near (NEAR) futures ranked second and third, with liquidations of $803,310 and $665,460 respectively.
However, over a 24-hour period long liquidations continued to dominate as the majority of traders had been betting on a weekend-driven crypto rally. Monday’s total liquidations — $428.24 million in long positions versus $45.2 million in shorts — were the largest recorded since January 22. Clearly, long-position liquidations during yesterday’s trading session were nearly ten times greater than short-position liquidations.
NEAR and SHIB move against the market tide
While most cryptocurrencies lost value in the past 24 hours, two tokens stood out with bullish performance.
Meme coin SHIB traded up 6.80% on the day, although it remains more than 6.50% below its price from last week. By contrast, NEAR’s native token followed a consistently green path throughout the day and was trading 8.60% higher than yesterday.