Bitcoin falls near $55,000 level as over $1 billion in crypto futures are liquidated

The price of bitcoin has fallen near $55,000 level from around $61,000 on Saturday as derivatives positions worth over $1 billion get force liquidated by crypto exchanges.

In the last 24 hours, around $1.15 billion worth of open interest was liquidated by crypto exchanges, according to tracker Bybt.com. That means crypto exchanges liquidated traders' overleveraged positions.

Traders overleverage, or trade on margin, thinking that bitcoin's price would go up and they would benefit more. But when bitcoin's price goes below the liquidation price of their positions, exchanges force liquidate or close their positions because traders cannot fulfill margin requirements of their leveraged positions.

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More than 190,000 traders were liquidated in the last 24 hours, and the largest single liquidation occurred on Huobi for bitcoin, valued at around $19 million, according to Bybt.

In terms of total liquidations across exchanges, Binance had the largest share (around $435 million), followed by Bybit (around $328 million) and Huobi (around $192 million). In terms of crypto assets, bitcoin positions formed most liquidations, followed by ether (ETH) and Polkadot (DOT) at the time of writing.

Bitcoin is currently trading at around $55,500, according to TradingView.

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Yogita Khatri is a senior reporter at The Block, covering all things crypto. As one of the earliest team members, Yogita has played a pivotal role in breaking numerous stories, exclusives and scoops. With nearly 3,000 articles under her belt, Yogita holds the records as The Block's most-published and most-read author of all time. Prior to joining The Block, Yogita worked at crypto publication CoinDesk and The Economic Times, where she wrote on personal finance. To contact her, email: [email protected]. For her latest work, follow her on X @Yogita_Khatri5.