$223M In Crypto Liquidated As Bitcoin Falls To $39,000

More than $223 million worth of cryptocurrency liquidations occurred on Thursday after Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) lost support at $40,000.

What Happened: According to data from CoinGlass, more than 62,000 traders were liquidated as Bitcoin dropped 7.5% to a low of $39,145.

The single largest liquidation occurred on ByBit on an Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH)/U.S. dollar trading pair for a value of $7.5 million.

The majority of traders were liquidated from long positions. A total of $149 million longs were liquidated, while $73 million worth of shorts were liquidated.

The sudden dip in Bitcoin’s price caught many crypto traders off-guard after Wednesday’s strong price action following Biden’s executive order on cryptocurrencies.

Altcoins such as Terra (LUNA), Monero (XMR) gained more than 20% in a day as Bitcoin surged to $42,400.

Incidentally, the news of the executive order led to a large number of shorts liquidated on Wednesday and resulted in a majority of traders switching to long positions.

“Just right before the leaked [executive order], we can see via funding rate that majority of folks on major exchanges (Binance and FTX) were heavily short. Then they got liquidated and folks have switched Long,” analysts at Santiment stated on Wednesday.