Bitcoin plummets to nearly $29,000 ── After a large sell order occurred on Binance | coindesk JAPAN | Coindesk Japan

Bitcoin (BTC) plunged more than 3% in just 15 minutes on the morning of April 19, European time, with the largest cryptocurrency by market cap falling below $30,000. According to data from CoinDesk, the price fell further to near $29,000.

The sell didn’t appear to be driven by any underlying reason, but a huge sell order originating from cryptocurrency exchange Binance and an unexpected high of over 10% for the UK March Inflation figures may have affected market sentiment.

There is also a so-called long squeeze. More than $25 million worth of bitcoin futures were liquidated, of which 98% were long positions, i.e. positions betting on rising prices.

“A higher than expected UK CPI[consumer price index]may have weighed on risk assets, including BTC. K33K33 Research analyst Vetle Lunde told CoinDesk.

“This is more like a leverage washout. Binance open interest in BTC/USDT physical is down 5.1% over the 15 minute period, more so for ETH, which has a higher liquidation volume than BTC. It has had a serious impact,” Runde said. Open interest refers to the total number of contracts in the futures market.

Prominent crypto-twitter trader @52kskew said a sell order of 16,000 BTC worth more than $467 million at current prices preceded the sudden drop. Therefore, he pointed out that the long squeeze may have started from there.

“16,000 BTC is an unusual size to sell on the Binance spot market. Usually this kind of sale happens before bad news comes out,” said @52kskew.the tweet aftergives an opinion.

$BTC Spot CVDs
16K BTC sold at market from binance spot
Other spot exchanges had pretty typical size being sold

Interesting selloff here pic.twitter.com/9SmirkSM7b

— Skew Δ (@52kskew) April 19, 2023

A liquidation is when an exchange forces a trader’s leveraged position to close due to a partial or total loss of margin. Occurs when an investor fails to meet the margin requirements of a leveraged position and does not have sufficient funds to continue trading.

Large liquidations can signal local peaks or troughs of sharp price action, and traders can take positions accordingly.

The slide has led to a selloff in the broader crypto market, with Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC) and Dogecoin (DOGE) down 5.3% over the past 24 hours, while Solana (SOL) is down nearly 9%.

｜Translation: coindesk JAPAN
｜Editing: Toshihiko Inoue
｜Image: Shutterstock
｜Original：Bitcoin Drops to $29,000 in Sudden Sell-Off; Longs Are 98% of Over $160M in Crypto Liquidations