Bitcoin Gives Up $27K in Sharp Tumble as Crypto Liquidations Top $100M
The price earlier on Monday had risen to above $27,400, its highest level since late August.
Sep 18, 2023 at 6:57 p.m. UTC
/arc-photo-coindesk/arc2-prod/public/LXF2COBSKBCNHNRE3WTK2BZ7GE.png)
Bitcoin (BTC) rise above $27,000 proved short-lived, as the token tumbled about 2% in minutes during early afternoon U.S. hours to $26,700.
The largest and oldest cryptocurrency had advanced to as high as $27,420 earlier Monday, its highest price since late August.
BTC was still up 0.8% over the past 24 hours, underperforming the broad-market proxy CoinDesk Market Index's (CMI) 1.1% rise.
The whipsaw in prices caught some crypto derivatives traders off-guard, liquidating roughly $100 million worth of leveraged trading positions over the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass data. Short traders, who attempted to profit from lower prices, endured $60 million in losses, while long traders, who bet on higher prices, suffered $40 million in losses.
:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/2BEF55QMTBFLZNFH2EWIBBXRGU.png)
:format(webp)/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/coindesk/8b1395a8-12af-4705-9fe5-b862b248250d.png)
Krisztian Sandor is a reporter on the U.S. markets team focusing on stablecoins and institutional investment. He holds BTC and ETH.