Bitcoin Plunges to $64K as U.S. Tech Rout Hits Crypto, Leads to $250M Long Bets Being Liquidated

• Bitcoin experienced a sharp decline of over 3% at the start of Asian trading hours amid a broader stock market downturn.
• Over $250 million in bullish bets were wiped out, marking the most substantial liquidation since early July.

Bitcoin (BTC) nosedived over 3% at the start of Asian trading hours amid a broader stock market rout and weakening sentiment for risk assets such as cryptocurrencies.

BTC fell from over $65,500 to nearly $64,000 within minutes at the start of Tokyo trading. The sudden plunge led to over $250 million bullish bets being liquidated, the worst hit since early July.

Liquidations occur when an exchange forcefully closes a trader’s leveraged position due to a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin. Such data is beneficial for traders as it serves as a signal of leverage being effectively washed out from popular futures products – acting as a short-term indication of a decline in price volatility.

The broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by capitalization, minus stablecoins, fell by 3.3%.

Ether (ETH) longs lost the most at $100 million, driven by a 7.5% slump in the token amid outflows from the newly launched ETH ETF.

Binance recorded the highest liquidations among exchanges at $118 million, of which 88% were long trades. OKX and Huobi – popular among Asia-based traders – recorded as much as 94% of long traders opened on their exchange liquidated.

The dive came as U.S. technology stocks took a hit on Wednesday, causing the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index to lose 660 points, its biggest drop since 2022.

Mixed quarterly earnings from Google parent Alphabet (GOOG) and Tesla (TSLA) saw shares of the firms close as low as 12% on Wednesday; in aggregate, the so-termed “Magnificent 7” tech stocks lost more than $750 billion in market cap on Wednesday, the most on record for the group.

Losses spread over to Asian markets early Thursday as Japan’s Nikkei 225 slumped more than 3% amid concerns that the Bank of Japan could hike interest rates.