Global cryptocurrency markets suffered a record single-day drop overnight into Monday, according to Coinglass, a service tracking transactions on major crypto exchanges. The total volume of liquidated trading positions has exceeded $2.24 billion in the past 24 hours.
In trading, liquidation occurs when a position is forcibly closed because the trader no longer has sufficient funds to maintain it. This can happen voluntarily or be triggered automatically by the broker when the trader’s losses exceed the margin they provided. It typically takes place during a margin call – a situation in which the trader fails to meet the required collateral to keep the position open.
More than 730,000 traders faced liquidations, the Cointelegraph news outlet reported, noting that nearly 37% of all liquidations occurred on the Binance crypto exchange due to its large user base. Other cryptocurrency exchanges sharing the liquidations were reportedly OKX, Bybit, Gate.IO, and HTX.
A number of crypto-oriented media outlets have attributed the developments to new tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China. Liquidations were also reportedly spurred by Trump’s follow-up threats to “definitely” widen the scope of levies to the EU and potentially the UK, as another round of a wide-scale trade war sparked a sell-off in risk assets, affecting digital currencies.
Alongside the massive liquidations, some top trading cryptocurrencies dropped double digits. Ether took the worst hit, briefly nosediving around 20% to $2,520. The second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap after Bitcoin had climbed to $2,611 as of 11:24 GMT. Bitcoin plummeted by 6.5%, hitting a low of $92,500 before recovering to trade at $95,484. Cardano and Ripple dropped more than 19% and 16% respectively.
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped by nearly 9% to reach $3.24 trillion, according to CoinGecko, which tracks 17,047 cryptocurrencies. The total trading volume of digital currencies over the past 24 hours amounted to $401 billion.
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