The crypto market took an unexpected hit on April 12 as a spontaneous decline in the price of Bitcoin and prominent altcoins resulted in massive liquidations. The origin of this widespread price dip remains largely unknown, among a plethora of plausible reasons, including a recent price correction in the US stock markets.
Almost $500 Million Liquidated In An Hour Amidst Crypto Flash Crash
According to data from CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin slipped by 4.49% in the last day, falling as low as $66,052. As expected, BTC’s decline reverberated through the market, with prominent altcoins Ethereum and Solana recording daily losses to the tune of 8.12% and 12.16%, respectively
As earlier stated, these losses translated into 277,843 traders losing their leverage positions as total crypto liquidations reached $877.21 million in the last 24 hours based on data from Coinglass. Of these figures, long positions accounted for $782.98 million, with short traders losing only $94.24 million.
Notably, $467 million in leverage positions were closed within an hour as a result of a general price decline. The highest amount of liquidations at $369.85 million was recorded on Binance, while the single largest liquidation order valued at $7.19 million occurred in the ETH-USD market on the OKX exchange.
Interestingly, Bitcoin’s price decline correlated with a dip in the US stock market as the S&P 500 index declined by 1.6% to trade as low as $5,108. This market crash was preceded by recent CPI data, which showed that the inflation rate rose to 3.5% year over year in March.
Such reports only indicate that the US Federal Reserve (Fed) could not be implementing any rate cuts soon as it aims to force inflation down to its annual target of 2%. This prediction is quite bearish for the crypto market generally as Fed rate cuts allow investors to comfortably seek risky assets such as BTC with a potential of high yields.
Bitcoin Experiences Network Growth As Halving Approaches
On a more positive note, Bitcoin has recorded a rise in non-empty wallets on its network ahead of the Halving event on April 19. Blockchain analytics platform Santiment reported an increase of 370,000 BTC wallets holding active coins over the last six days. Interestingly, the analytic team is backing investors to maintain this accumulative trend all through the Bitcoin halving event.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $66,882, with a 44.80% increase in its daily trading volume, which is currently valued at $43.80 billion. However, Bitcoin’s price has generally been unimpressive in recent times, with a decline of 1.33% and 6.20% in the last seven and 30 days, respectively.
Featured image from The Independent, chart from Tradingview