Bitcoin Price Plunges to $60,000 as Crypto Liquidations Surpass $300 Million – Decrypt

THE Bitcoin price plunged to nearly $60,000 per coin on Tuesday afternoon, prompting a surge in liquidations of positions by those betting on the asset’s price.

Data from CoinGlass shows that in the last 24 hours, more than $261 million in long positions across all cryptocurrencies were liquidated. Including short positions, the total liquidations amount to more than $324 million.

In the last four hours alone, that figure stands at almost $70 million, of which $24.4 million were Bitcoin positions.

Currently, the price of Bitcoin stands at $60,309 per CoinGecko data, although crypto exchange Coinbase shows it dropped as low as $60,012 not too long ago. Ethereum, meanwhile, is down to $2,985 at the time of writing, a 6% drop in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin’s daily decline stands at just under 4% at the time of writing.

In the world of derivatives, long positions are held by traders who place cash betting that the price of an asset will increase in the future.

Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of nearly $74,000 in March, according to CoinGecko data. Its previous all-time high set in 2021 was $69,044.

The price rise was partly because new investors could gain exposure to the asset through spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January .

But signs that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates higher for longer, as well as geopolitical unrest in the Middle East, are deterring investors from risky assets like cryptocurrencies.

The new spot Bitcoin ETFs are also not as popular as they were after they launched and investors cashed in on the vehicles, helping to further drive down the price of the largest digital coin.

Edited by Andrew Hayward