Bullish bets on higher crypto prices lost $770 million in the last 24 hours as Bitcoin fell below $100,000, leading some majors to quickly lose momentum in a bloody start to the week.
Solana’s Sol and Dogecoin (doge) fell more than 10% to lead losses among majors, while Ether (ETH), BNB’s BNB, XRP (XRP), and Cardano’s ADA fell as much as 9%. The overall market cap fell 8.5% as of Asian afternoon hours on Monday.
Tokens outside the top twenty sectors showed similar problems, with Memecoin Pepe (Pepe), layer 1 upstart APTOS (APT), Gate.io’s Gate, and AI Agent Creation Platform Virtuals (virtuals) losing up to 18%.
Jupiter’s JUP was the only token in the green with a 3.5% gain in the last 24 hours on the back of the decision to buy subsequent tokens from the open market from the fees generated on its trading platform, which can equal hundreds of millions in net Buy volumes in a year.
Bitcoin fell below $99,000 early Monday as traders took profits ahead of the first US FOMC meeting this year. Losses were tracked in US stock futures, which fell as traders digested information about the cost and capabilities of China-based Deepseek, which threatens a costly narrative led by OpenAI.
Futures markets reflected these losses, with traders of BTC-Tracked products losing $238 million in the last 24 hours, mainly in the early European and Asian afternoon hours. Sol and Dege Bets lost a cumulative $50 million, Altcoin tracked products lost $138 million, and Ether tracked futures lost $84 million.
The largest single liquidation order occurred on HTX, a margined BTC exchange with unte valued at $98.4 million.
Liquidation occurs when a trader has insufficient funds to keep a leveraged trade open. The high volatility of the crypto market means that sell-offs are a common occurrence, although major events like Mondays can provide actionable signals for further market sentiment or positioning.
Liquidation can indicate an overstretched market, indicating that a price correction has occurred, while price chart areas with high liquidation volumes can act as support or resistance levels where the price could reverse due to absence of additional selling pressure from liquidated positions.
However, if the market continues to decline, those with short positions could see this as validation, potentially increasing their bets. Conversely, contrarian traders may view a large sell-off as a buying opportunity, hoping for a price recovery once selling momentum subsides.
