Bitcoins losses on Monday wiped out a massive leveraged bullish effort.
Trading worth $61.5 million was forcibly closed by cryptocurrency exchange HTX, marking the largest single liquidation in the past 24 hours, according to data source Coinglass.
The so-called liquidation occurred as bitcoin slipped from Saturday’s $68,600 high back to $64,400, erasing the weekend’s gains in a matter of hours. CoinDesk contacted HTX for comment.
The big hit — big enough to suggest a concentrated whale or fund position rather than a retail margin call — landed amid a broader wipeout that saw $467.64 million in total liquidations across 137,422 traders, according to CoinGlass. Long positions accounted for $434 million of that, about 93% of the total, pointing to a market that was still positioned to the upside heading into the week and was washed out as bids disappeared.
Bitcoin futures alone saw $213.62 million in forced closes, followed by ether (ETH) at $113.89 million and solana (SOL) at $19.89 million. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token added another $10.72 million, a remarkable figure for an asset outside the usual top-five liquidation list.
Fear reigns
The selloff pulled Alternative.me’s Crypto Fear and Greed Index back to 5 out of 100, a reading categorized as “extreme fear” that has only been matched three times since the index launched in 2018: August 2019, June 2022 and earlier this month during bitcoin’s drop to $60,000.
Glassnode data amplifies the stress. The firm said Monday that the seven-day moving average of net realized losses among recent bitcoin buyers still ran near $500 million a day, meaning short-term holders are continuing to capitulate even after the initial flush in February.
“While intensity has cooled, the broader regime still signals a market under pressure,” Glassnode noted, “with participants in the base formation phase continuing to capitulate.”
Bitcoin is now 48% below its October peak of $126,000 and 5.5% below its 2021 peak of $69,000 – a level that once felt like the ceiling and now looks like a floor that keeps being tested. Monday’s wreck cleared the leverage effect, but the pattern remains intact: traders reload longs into every pullback, and the market continues to punish them for it.
