Leading digital assets bitcoin and ether both saw sharp declines following Israel’s airstrikes on Iran, with bitcoin falling 4% to under $104,000, and ether seeing a sharper decline of 10% to an intra-day low of $2,468.

This decline triggered significant liquidations in the crypto market, with more than $1.07 billion in long positions wiped out from over 251,000 traders over 24 hours.

Bitcoin and ether accounted for the lion’s share of those liquidations, most of which took place on crypto exchanges Binance and Bybit.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

“The war in the Middle East is definitely having an effect on BTC and crypto. If we see a big dump to under 100k on BTC and longs liquidation of over 1B, that is a signal to buy more spot,” noted pseudonymous technical analyst account Logical TA on X, cautioning against derivatives. 

“If you dabble in leverage, you will just get liquidated over and over again from the volatility. Spot is safest.”