Crypto Market Shock as Bitcoin Suffers Sudden Drop to $29K

The drop washed futures contracts worth millions of dollars after a massive market sell order at Binance.

On Wednesday morning, the biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Bitcoin (BTC), fell more than 3% in just 15 minutes, dropping below $30,000. According to CoinDesk data, further losses brought it to a low of $29,000.

Although the sell-off initially didn’t seem to be caused by anything fundamental, an abnormally big sell order on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance and an unexpectedly high U.K. A March inflation rate of above 10% may have affected the market’s mood.

A ‘long squeeze’ is also included in the mix. Bitcoin futures worth more than $25 million were liquidated. The majority (98%) of the holdings were longs, or bets on rising prices.

The depth of the reaction has been much, far more severe than in other asset classes, Vetle Lunde, a senior analyst at K33 Research, said in a statement to CoinDesk. “The hotter-than-expected U.K. CPI may have weighted over risk assets, including BTC.

“Seems to be more of a leverage washout. Binance OI in BTCUSDT perps fell 5.1% in 15 minutes, effects more severe in ETH with larger liquidation volume than BTC,” Lunde stated, referring to both perpetual futures contracts and open interest, or the total amount of contracts in the futures market.

Famous pseudonymous cryptocurrency Twitter trader @52kskew noted that a sell order for 16,000 bitcoins, valued over $467 million at the current exchange rate, came before the dump and may have started the long squeeze.

“16K BTC is unusual size to be market sold solely from Binance spot usually the kind of sale happens before bad news comes out,” @52kskew commented in a subsequent tweet.

When an exchange forcibly terminates a trader’s leveraged position as a result of a partial or complete loss of their initial margin, this is referred to as liquidation. It occurs when a trader lacks the capital to maintain an open position because they are unable to match the margin requirements for a leveraged position.

Large liquidations may mark the local peak or bottom of a sharp price movement, providing traders with the opportunity to adjust their positions.

The decline sparked a sell-off in the overall cryptocurrency market, with solana (SOL) losing close to 9% and ether (ETH), polygon (MATIC), and dogecoin (DOGE) all down by approximately 5% in the last day.