$1.68B liquidations hit crypto! But here’s why you shouldn’t panic

Key Takeaways

What caused the $1.68B crypto carnage?

Overleveraged longs got liquidated, flipping high-caps into risk-off mode and dragging the crypto market down nearly $180 billion.

Is this a bearish signal for BTC?

With spot-led rebounds and record $227 billion derivatives OI, the market looks primed for a healthy reset.

The past 24 hours were a crypto bloodbath.

A total of $1.68 billion in liquidations hit the market, wiping out 389,769 traders, with 95% of those losses coming from long holders. That means traders lost nearly $1.6 billion in leveraged bets on a bull run gone wrong.

The result? The carnage has flipped high-caps into risk-off mode.

On-chain data shows traders dumping positions, slicing through support zones, and torching over-leveraged longs, pushing the market deep into the red.

Source: CoinGlass

Backing this, the total crypto market cap hit a nearly month-long low.

The market shed almost $180 billion in the past 24 hours, dragging the TOTAL index down 4.55%. Bitcoin [BTC] also took a hit, falling to a $2.23 trillion market cap, which marks its worst drop in nearly a month at 3.04%.

From a technical perspective, BTC accounted for roughly 40% of the total decline, which means altcoins absorbed the majority of the sell-off. This shows the pullback wasn’t BTC-led, but a broad, market-wide correction.

Excessive leverage sparks crypto market reset

Overheated derivatives shook the crypto market.

As AMBCrypto flagged, this wasn’t a BTC-led correction. Instead, leverage was stacking hard in altcoins. This setup is actually bullish, as liquidating overexposed longs could clear the decks for a healthy market reset.

In fact, history supports this pattern. During previous BTC pullbacks, derivatives often went parabolic on leverage. For instance, on the 23rd of July, Open Interest (OI) surged to a record $213 billion across the market.

Source: CoinGlass

The result? BTC sold off nearly 8% from its $123k all-time high.

But after two weeks of liquidations, bulls swooped in, pushing Bitcoin to a new $124k ATH. The rebound felt more spot-led than leverage-driven, catapulting BTC’s market cap to $2.50 trillion.

A similar setup emerged on the 19th of September. The OI exploded to $227 billion, with traders piling leverage across crypto.

However, unless the next pullback goes BTC-led, the market looks primed for a healthy reset.