The cryptocurrency market has suffered a widespread fall, with Bitcoin leading the way. BTC fell from nearly $71,000 to under $65,300, before recovering slightly. The price of Ether also plummeted, as did altcoins, some losing more than 20% of their value.
The cryptocurrency market faces a cascade of liquidations
Yesterday, the Bitcoin price plummeted throughout the afternoon, dragging the entire cryptocurrency market into the red. After briefly touching the $71,000 mark, BTC fell to less than $65,300 by the end of the day. It has since recovered, however, and is currently trading at around $67,400.
Ether, the second most capitalized cryptocurrency on the market, experienced a steeper fall. While Bitcoin fell by just under 8% on the day, the price of ETH dropped by as much as 12%, from over $3,530 to around $3,100.
Altcoins also all fell to varying degrees. Some of the most highly capitalized cryptocurrencies saw their prices fall particularly sharply, including SOL (-12%), XRP (-11%), AVAX (-17.7%), LINK (-15%) and NEAR (-16.4%).
The memecoin category was particularly hard hit by the crypto market downturn, with WIF, PEPE, FLOKI and BONK all losing almost 20% over the same period. DOGE and SHIB, which have a much larger market capitalization than the aforementioned memecoins, experienced a more mixed decline, losing 14% and 12% respectively.
Overall, the cryptocurrency market has seen its market capitalization fall by almost 7% over the past 24 hours.
According to data provided by Coinglass, more than $936 million has been liquidated on positions opened by traders over the last 24 hours, the largest liquidation cascade in the last 30 days.
Liquidations of short (red) and long (green) positions in the cryptocurrency market
If we take a step back, Bitcoin is still up 150% over the last 6 months. On the one hand, this growth has been driven by the renewed confidence of crypto investors, and on the other by Bitcoin spot ETFs.
Such is the attraction surrounding these new investment products in the United States that, according to a recent report by Glassnode, trading volumes on ETFs now account for 30% of all spot crypto markets.
This fall in Bitcoin and the crypto market as a whole comes as halving is now less than a week away, with the date of this major quadrennial event set for April 20. Historically, the BTC price has always risen significantly in the year following halving, sometimes with a short-term correction.
