Crypto Futures Record $1B in Liquidations as Bitcoin Nosedives, Ether Slumps Most Since 2021

• Crypto-tracked futures saw over $1 billion million in liquidations in the past 24 hours amid a market sell-off, with ether futures recording $304 million in liquidations.
• Over 200,000 traders were liquidated, with the largest single liquidation order worth $27 million on Huobi.
• Bitcoin and ether prices fell, with ether experiencing its steepest single-day drop since May 2021, and the crypto fear and greed index indicating "fear."

Crypto-tracked futures recorded over $1 billion in liquidations in the past 24 hours as the market sell-off worsened on Sunday. The bloodbath was catalyzed by a stronger Japanese yen and rumors of market maker Jump Trading liquidating its crypto business.

Ether (ETH) tracked futures recorded over $340 million in liquidated bets, data shows, with bitcoin futures losses leading at $420 million. Futures tracking Solana’s SOL, dogecoin (DOGE), xrp (XRP) and pepe (PEPE) took on $75 million in cumulative liquidations.

Over 275,000 individual traders were liquidated, and the largest single liquidation order was on crypto exchange Huobi – a BTC/USD trade worth $27 million. The data shows that some 87% of all traders affected were long traders, or those that bet on higher prices.

The liquidations came as bitcoin (BTC) slid more than 11% over 24 hours, while ether plunged as much as 25% before slightly recovering. TradingView data shows this was the worst single-day price fall for ETH since May 2021, when prices dumped from over $3,500 to $1,700. TradingView's daily candle shows performance for UTC 00:00 to 23:59.

The drop caused the popular crypto fear and greed sentiment index to flash “fear,” reaching its lowest level since early July. The index tracks volatility, prices, and social media data to indicate whether participants are fearful—usually a sign of local bottoms—or greedy, which marks market tops.

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. It happens when a trader is unable to meet the margin requirements for a leveraged position, that is, they don't have enough funds to keep the trade open.

Crypto markets started to sell off last week amid geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and poor earnings reports by technology firms. These factors dampened the artificial intelligence (AI) hype among investors and created a flight away from risky assets.

The rout worsened early Monday as the yen surged to seven-month highs due to heightened expectations of further rate hikes by the Bank of Japan and the unwinding of carry trades. Tokyo’s Topix 100 index posted to its biggest drop since 2011.

UPDATE (5 August, 2024): Updates headline and story with new figures.