$1.2 Billion Liquidated on Binance, Taking the Lead like Always, on Bitcoin’s Drop to Nearly $50k

The price of Bitcoin tumbled to about $50,300 on most of the cryptocurrency exchanges during the latest sell-off.

As of writing, the leading digital currency is trading around $51,500, but it is yet to be known if the market has bottomed or, as we have seen this entire week, BTC would fall further to a new lower level.

Still, there is nothing to be worried about as of yet, as the last two pullbacks were 31% and 26%.

Meanwhile, in the past 24 hours, a whopping $2.44 billion and 328,306 traders have been liquidated, as per Bybt. These liquidations now surpass the level seen on March 14, which sent us to $53,150 the day after hitting the all-time high of nearly $62,000.

Today’s liquidation of both longs ($2.23 billion) and shorts ($190.36 million), however, hasn’t reached the level of Feb. 22nd and is far off from the day before that.

Source: Bybt.com

Out of these $2.44 billion liquidated, about $28 million belongs to Bitcoin traders and $3.91 million to Ethereum ETH -4.38% Ethereum / USD ETHUSD $ 1,144.33
-$50.12-4.38% Volume 14.05 b Change -$50.12 Open $1,144.33 Circulating 121.34 m Market Cap 138.85 b 5 mon Coinbase Predicts Substantial Growth of Newer L1 Chains & Institutionalization of Regulated DeFi 5 mon A Possible Crypto Recovery Moving Into New Year, Risk-on Sentiments Send The Stock Market to Another Record High 5 mon The Sandbox Game Is Migrating to Ethereum Sidechain Polygon and Launching A DAO in 2022 . Another whopping $1.18 million and $1.03 million belong to Filecoin FIL -5.00% Filecoin / USD FILUSD $ 5.54
-$0.28-5.00% Volume 123.39 m Change -$0.28 Open $5.54 Circulating 224.72 m Market Cap 1.25 b 6 mon Crypto Market Tanks: Bitcoin Correlation with S&P 500 Reaches 2021 High & USD Longs at Highest Level since June 2019 7 mon Grayscale Adds Avalanche (AVAX) and Terra (LUNA) to its Investment Product Consideration List 7 mon Australia's Largest Bank to Allow its 6.5 Million Users to Buy, Sell, & Hold 10 Cryptocurrencies via its App and Polkadot DOT -6.20% Polkadot / USD DOTUSD $ 7.32
-$0.45-6.20% Volume 456.74 m Change -$0.45 Open $7.32 Circulating 987.58 m Market Cap 7.23 b 6 mon Bitcoin and Ether Breaks Trend With Outflows While Altcoins Continue to See Inflows 6 mon SBI Holdings to Launch Japan’s First Crypto Fund; Including BTC, ETH, DOT, LINK, LTC, XRP & BCH 6 mon Solana Unaffected by Price Jitters while Bitcoin, Ether, Polkadot, and Cardano Post Outflows , respectively.

Interestingly, like always, Binance leads in liquidations accounting for nearly 50% of all the liquidations at $1.2 billion, out of which $1.1 billion were longs.

Bitfinex and Deribit traders remain to be level-headed, with their funds accounting for a mere 0.12% and 0.83% of the total exchange liquidation share, respectively.

These liquidations could be in part related to Binance managing $38.16 billion volume in Bitcoin futures in the past 24 hours compared to Bitfinex and Deribit’s $70 million and $2.56 billion, respectively, as per Skew.

Another reason could be the high leverage offered on Binance. While leverage is available up to 125x on crypto perpetual contracts, the default is also 20x.

As we shared before, Binance reported in December 2019 that within its first two months of its futures operations, on average, over 60% of traders use 20x or higher, and 21% of traders use the maximum 125x leverage.

Leverage is extremely popular in crypto and tends to exacerbate Bitcoin’s moves both on the upside and downside. Traders and industry experts have time and again advised people to refrain from using leverage in the crypto space, which already enjoys high volatility.