Bitcoin’s quest for $100,000 hit an impasse as sellers took control and pushed BTC price under $93,000. Margin traders sitting in long positions saw heavy losses as the total crypto market liquidations on the buy side reached $337.6 million over the past 24 hours.

Proof of the liquidations-driven sell-off can be seen in the chart below depicting volume-by-side data for major centralized exchanges and showing heavy selling at exchanges offering perpetual futures trading.

Looking beyond the forced selling of margin longs (liquidations), Glassnode identified Bitcoin long-term holders (LTHs) as another culprit behind the current selling. The analysts pinpointed the 6-month to 12-month LTH cohort as the primary seller “when an average cost basis 71% lower than the market price ( ~$57.9K).” 

Financial markets are always a delicate balance between buyers and sellers and today’s price action saw the bias shift from the shorter-term sentiment being spot and leveraged long to short. As liquidations ramped up and Bitcoin price dropped closer to $90,000, a surge in short positions opened, and BTC’s funding rate climbed from 0.019 to a peak at 0.04. 

Liquidation map data now suggest that a Bitcoin price drop below $94,000 will kick off the next wave of forced selling to $90,000, a level which some traders have suggested they would be happy to bid. 

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.