Liquidations force Bitcoin lower

A cascade of liquidations sent bitcoin and the crypto market lower on Wednesday.

A sudden cascade of liquidations

All appeared calm on Wednesday at around 9 am BST, then without warning (no big news was in the markets) a liquidation cascade began on bitcoin.

The selling picked up steam, and within 30 minutes the price had dropped from $30,082 to around $29,000, a more than 3.5% move to the downside. According to Coinglass $236 million was wiped out for the day. 

Is retail back in the crypto market?

It might appear that retail had finally taken an interest in the crypto market, and had seen bitcoin rising strongly and taking the altcoins higher. Longs vastly outnumbered the shorts as the leverage was being piled on with gay abandon.

The whales must have been licking their lips at the sight. Therefore the trap was laid and sprung, trapping many and liquidating all the retail leverage traders who had recently entered the market on the expectation of an upside explosion.

These liquidation events are starting to become periodic, as the last big one happened in early March, and the one before that in early February. 

As if they had a presage of what was about to occur, the DefiMoon Twitter account tweeted on how badly skewed were the longs to shorts for Ethereum on GMX.

I’m very bullish as $ETH fundamentals look solid across the board, but this $GMX OI long-short skew is a little ridiculous.

Seems everyone & their cat is long on max leverage…. pic.twitter.com/zzY2DvK59f

— DefiMoon 🦇🔊 (@DefiMoon) April 19, 2023

Next 24 hours is crucial

The Fear and Greed Index has fallen back to a Neutral position today at 52, which is quite some fall from Wednesday’s level in the Greed at 63. This reflects the fear that is still in the crypto market, given the hugely negative stance of the Biden administration towards the asset class.

As it stands so far today, $BTC is flat at around $28,800. It is still just under the very important support at $28,900 and so the next 24 hours could tell which way the price will go from here.

$ETH has fallen back inside the upwards channel it had been in since January and has just tested the upper bound. If it falls back to the lower bound it would go under $1,800, plus there is also support at $1,715.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.