Market volatility causes $138 million of liquidations on centralized exchanges in 24 hours

Market volatility causes $138 million of liquidations on centralized exchanges in 24 hours

As a result of heightened market volatility, total liquidations of leveraged crypto positions in the past 24 hours has surpassed $138 million.

The majority of the liquidations involved long positions, leading to a loss of over $120 million, while short positions contributed only around $18 million to the total liquidations, according to Coinglass data.

The price of bitcoin has dropped more than 2.5% in the last 24 hours, falling below the $41,000 mark. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is now trading at $40,730 as of 7 a.m. ET, according to The Block’s Prices Page.

In the twelve days since the SEC approved multiple spot bitcoin ETFs, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap has lost over 7% of its value.

After the approvals on January 10, the bitcoin price rallied above the $48,000 mark before posting a sharp fall to around $43,000. Now some analysts are predicting a further decline below the $40,000 mark.

BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom CIO Arthur Hayes said he has hedged against further downside movement with BTC puts at a strike price of $35,000. "BTC looks mad heavy. I think we break $40k. I went long some 29 March $35,000 strike puts," Hayes said in an X.com post. Puts are options contracts that give the holder the right (but not the obligation) to sell the underlying asset at the specified strike price.

Heightened bitcoin price volatility

The annualized bitcoin volatility has increased since the SEC approved multiple spot bitcoin ETFs. Before the approval annualized BTC volatility was around 46%, however, it has now increased to over 52%, according to The Block's Data Dashboard.

The volatility has led to the liquidation of almost $30 million worth of leveraged bitcoin positions. The majority of BTC liquidations are longs, with over $24 million bitcoin long position wiped out in the past 24 hours, per Coinglass data.

Unrealized profits among bitcoin holders have decreased from the elevated levels observed after the launch of multiple spot ETFs on January 11, which may offer some relief to the increase in sell pressure. According to The Block's data dashboard, the circulating supply of bitcoin in profit has fallen from a multi-year high of over 90% to a current reading of just over 83%.