Volatility Continues: $1.5B Liquidated as Bitcoin Drops to Nearly $52,700 & Ether to $1,750

The crypto market has extended the weekend’s losses into this week as the price of Bitcoin goes down to about $52,700.

Over the weekend, Bitcoin’s price went to $54k only to make a new all-time high at $58,360 the same day. Today, the market is back down as BTC records about a 9.5% drop from yesterday’s high.

In tandem with Bitcoin, the rest of the market is also experiencing a sell-off.

Ether made its way to $1,750 after going above $2,000 on Saturday. ETH 3.32% Ethereum / USD ETHUSD $ 1,785.68
$59.283.32% Volume 14.23 b Change $59.28 Open $1,785.68 Circulating 120.96 m Market Cap 216 b 4 mon Coinbase Predicts Substantial Growth of Newer L1 Chains & Institutionalization of Regulated DeFi 4 mon A Possible Crypto Recovery Moving Into New Year, Risk-on Sentiments Send The Stock Market to Another Record High 4 mon The Sandbox Game Is Migrating to Ethereum Sidechain Polygon and Launching A DAO in 2022

Altcoins are down up to 40%, resulting in the overall cryptocurrency market losing $163 billion.

These losses are further exacerbated by the liquidations, with a total of $1.2 billion in the past 12 hours and $1.46 billion in the last 24 hours. And, of course, the majority of them have been long, as per Bybt.

This has been happening while the USD is also down, currently around 90.3. The US dollar has also been falling to fresh multi-year lows against its Australian peer, the New Zealand dollar, and the British pound as progress in curbing infections boosts sentiment for riskier assets.

Dollar net short position meanwhile fell to $29.09 billion recently, its lowest level since mid-December. It has been for four straight weeks that the USD net shorts have been falling.

This week has already started with a lot of volatility, which is expected to continue throughout the week, with 63.1k Bitcoin options expiring this Friday. While 56k strike is open in $160mln notional, the largest strike is 48k with 4.4k options open, noted Skew.

Total open interest in the Bitcoin options market meanwhile has surpassed $3 billion.

The cryptocurrency market made attempts at recovery several times as people jumped on to buy the dips, but the market has continued its downtrend so far. Bitcoin is still up 87% YTD and about 14x up from its March 2020 low.

When it comes to the fundamentals of the largest network, the difficulty is at its all-time high at 21.724 trillion and at 135.65 Th/s hash rate is near ATH of 151.3 Th/s, as per Bitinfocharts.

As for the mining companies, Canaan Inc., the largest member of the Elwood Blockchain Global Equity Index, saw its shares rising 200% over the past year.

However, the Hangzhou-based company that makes chips and equipment used to mine crypto assets had its sales in June and September dropped and the company posting four straight quarters of losses. But earlier this month, it reported having secured a long-term order following Tesla’s $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase.