Bullish bets on higher crypto prices lost $770 million in the past 24 hours as bitcoin fell below $100,000, prompting some majors to quickly lose momentum in a bloody start to the week.
Solana’s SOL and dogecoin (DOGE) fell more than 10% to lead losses among the majors, while ether (ETH), BNB Chain’s bnb, xrp (XRP) and Cardano’s ADA fell as much as 9%. The overall market capitalization was down 8.5% from Asian afternoon hours on Monday.
Tokens outside the top twenty and across different sectors showed similar issues, with memecoin pepe (PEPE), tier 1 upstart Aptos (APT), Gate.io’s GATE, and AI Agent creation platform Virtuals (VIRTUALS) losing as much as 18%.
Jupiter’s JUP was the only token in the green with a 3.5% gain over the past 24 hours on the back of a decision to buy back tokens from the open market from the fees generated on its trading platform – which could amount to hundreds of millions in net purchase volumes in one year.
Bitcoin fell below $99,000 early Monday as traders took profits ahead of the first US FOMC meeting of the year. It tracked losses in U.S. stock futures, which fell as traders digested information about the costs and capabilities of China-based DeepSeek, threatening an otherwise expensive narrative led by OpenAI.
Futures markets mirrored those losses, with traders of BTC-tracked products losing $238 million in the past 24 hours, mostly in the early European and Asian afternoon hours. SOL and DOGE bets lost a cumulative $50 million, altcoin-tracked products lost $138 million and ether-tracked futures lost $84 million.
The largest single liquidation order happened on HTX, a BTC trade with a margin of $98.4 million.
Liquidation occurs when a trader does not have sufficient funds to keep a leveraged trade open. The high volatility of the crypto market means liquidations are a common occurrence, although big events like Monday’s can provide actionable signals for further market sentiment or positioning.
The liquidation can signal a congested market, indicating that a price correction has occurred, while price chart areas with high liquidation volumes can act as support or resistance levels where price can reverse due to the absence of additional selling pressure from liquidated positions.
However, if the market continues to fall, those with short positions may see this as validation, potentially increasing their bets. Conversely, contrarian traders may see heavy liquidation as a buying opportunity and expect a price rebound when selling momentum wanes.
