Bitcoin declined as much as 4% on Thursday, briefly trading at a three-week low of $58,930. The negative price action comes amid a broader market selloff, which saw most major cryptocurrencies in the red — except Uniswap’s native token UNI, which jumped ahead of an announcement revealing an upcoming layer 2 network.
Data from CoinGlass shows that as many as 57,201 traders were liquidated in the last 24 hours, with total liquidations across crypto exchanges exceeding $188 million.
At least $150 million worth of those liquidated positions came from traders making leveraged bets on a higher bitcoin price. Short positions saw just $38 million liquidated over the same period.
The single largest liquidation order took place on a BTC/USDT trading pair valued at $10.5 million on Binance. That trade alone made up a fifth of the total bitcoin long positions liquidated.
According to CryptoQuant analyst J.A Maartunn, the sell pressure was likely caused by a heavyweight on Coinbase. Maartunn noted that the Coinbase Premium fell to -$41 on Oct. 8, suggesting institutions were offloading their coins.
The Coinbase Premium is a metric that measures the difference between the price of Bitcoin on Coinbase compared to its price on Binance. It’s an indicator typically used to gauge the demand for Bitcoin among different investor groups, particularly U.S. investors versus global investors.
On Oct. 10, the Coinbase Premium fell to -$72.6, suggesting that U.S. investors continued to sell their coins in large volumes.
“The selling pressure isn’t coming directly from Silk Road Bitcoins. The address still holds 69,370 BTC (~$4.1B),” said Maartunn.
