Here’s How Many Short Traders Were Liquidated as Bitcoin (BTC) Soared Past $45K

TL;DR

• As it typically happens when BTC goes hard in either direction, a certain cohort of over-leveraged traders feel the pain.
• The primary cryptocurrency soared past $45,000 for the first time in almost two years, leaving more than $140 million worth of liquidations on a daily scale.

Bitcoin’s price stood still for over a week at around $42,000 and even slipped below that level on a few occasions. This was all happening while many altcoins were soaring and reduced BTC’s dominance over the market.

The New Year started on a similar note but quickly changed. BTC went on the offensive hard on Monday evening and shot up above $43,000. That was just the start of the impressive rally, which kept going in the early hours of Tuesday.

This culminated in a surge to $45,500, which means that the cryptocurrency is up by roughly 7% over the past 24 hours. This price tag has not been reached since early April 2022.

The massive surge in BTC’s price has not only increased its market capitalization to nearly $890 billion but has also regained some of its recently lost dominance over the alts, which is up to 51% on CMC now.

Still, there are multiple altcoins that have registered impressive gains as well. Solana and Avalanche lead the charge with 10-11% jumps, while DOT (6.5%), MATIC (5%), and ATOM (6%) follow suit from the larger caps.

These price increases have resulted in over $140 million worth of liquidation over the past day, with more than $110 million out of the entire amount coming from short positions.

The total number of wrecked traders stands above 45,000, according to data from CoinGlass, while the largest liquidated order was worth $10.16 million and took place on Binance.