Market volatility causes $230 million liquidations on centralized exchanges in 24 hours
Quick Take
- Bitcoin market volatility caused the asset’s price to rise to almost $48,000, before falling back into the $45,000 range in the past 24 hours.
- This price action led to $230 million in leveraged crypto positions getting liquidated on centralized exchanges.
Bitcoin 
BTC
+0.17%
has remained above the $45,000 mark amid a period of high volatility over the past 24 hours.
On Tuesday, a security breach of the SEC’s official X account resulted in a false message about the approval of a spot bitcoin ETF.
This post triggered volatile market action, causing the bitcoin price to surge to almost $48,000. However, once the agency clarified that the tweet was fake, the price plunged back into the $45,000 range, causing significant amount of liquidations.
The price volatility led to the liquidation of over $90 million worth of leveraged bitcoin positions.
According to Coinglass data, the total liquidations for all leveraged crypto positions amount to $230 million. The majority of the liquidations were long positions, with $140 million wiped out and $91 million in short positions were liquidated.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is now trading at $45,622 as of 5:50 a.m. ET, according to The Block’s Prices Page, representing a decrease of 1.88% in the past 24 hours.
The volatility that shook out many leveraged positions was a multi-week high for that metric. The Block's data dashboard puts current annualized bitcoin volatility at 50.97%.
RELATED INDICES
As anticipation of the potential approval of spot bitcoin ETFs gains momentum, annualized bitcoin volatility has increased from a low of 42.88% in mid-December.
Increased market volatility
The market volatility comes amid speculation the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission could approve spot bitcoin ETFs this week.
While many analysts view the approval of a such a fund as a possible catalyst for an upward price swing, a report released on Wednesday by CryptoQuant suggests that bitcoin market remains at risk of sudden price corrections.
Unrealized profits among bitcoin holders remain at elevated levels, the report said. "As much as bitcoin demand will certainly gain from the approval of the ETFs, we continue to recognize that several on-chain indicators signal a price correction can’t be ruled out, mostly because of a high level of unrealized profits from bitcoin holders," the report added.
According to The Block's Data Dashboard, the circulating supply of bitcoin in profit has reached a multi-year high of 90.23%.
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