Bullish bets on the cryptocurrency’s price have lost $770 million in the past 24 hours as Bitcoin tumbled below $100,000, causing some professionals to quickly lose momentum at the start of the week.
Solana’s SOL and Dogecoin (DOGE) fell more than 10%, leading losses among major currencies, while Ethereum (ETH), BNB Chain’s bnb, xrp (XRP) and Cardano’s ADA fell as much as 9%. As of Monday afternoon in Asia, the overall market value fell 8.5%.
Tokens outside the top twenty and across different industries have shown similar woes, with memecoin pepe (PEPE), layer 1 upstart Aptos (APT), Gate.io’s GATE and AI agent creation platform Virtuals (VIRTUALS) losing up to 18%.
Jupiter’s JUP, the only green coin to rise 3.5% in the past 24 hours, decided to buy back tokens from the open market with fees generated by its trading platform (which could be equivalent to hundreds of millions in net worth) within a year Purchase volume.
Bitcoin falls below $99,000 Traders took profits in early trading Monday ahead of the first U.S. Federal Open Market Committee meeting of the year. It tracked losses in U.S. stock futures, which fell as traders digested information about the costs and capabilities of China’s DeepSeek, threatening an otherwise costly OpenAI-led narrative.
The losses were reflected in the futures market, with traders of Bitcoin-tracking products losing $238 million in the past 24 hours, mostly in the European and Asian afternoon hours. Cumulative losses on SOL and DOGE bets were US$50 million, altcoin tracking products lost US$138 million, and Ethereum tracking futures lost US$84 million.
The largest single liquidation order occurred on HTX, a Tether-margined BTC trade worth $98.4 million.
Liquidation occurs when a trader does not have enough funds to maintain a leveraged trade. High volatility in the cryptocurrency market means liquidations are a common phenomenon, although major events such as Monday’s can provide actionable clues to further market sentiment or positioning.
Liquidations can signal an overly tight market, indicating that prices have corrected, and areas of the price chart with high liquidation volume can act as support or resistance levels, with prices potentially reversing due to the lack of further selling pressure from liquidated positions.
However, if the market continues to fall, those with short positions may see this as validation and may increase their bets. Conversely, contrarian traders may view heavy liquidations as buying opportunities, anticipating a recovery in price once the selling wanes.
