Bullish bets on higher crypto prices lost $770 million in the past 24 hours as bitcoin fell below $100,000, leading several 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 the majors, while ether (ETH), BNB Chain’s bnb, xrp (XRP) and Cardano’s ADA fell as much as 9%. The total market cap was down 8.5% during afternoon hours in Asia on Monday.
Tokens outside the top twenty different sectors showed similar problems, with memecoin pepe (PEPE), layer 1 upstart Aptos (APT), Gate.io’s GATE and AI Agent creation platform which Virtuals (VIRTUALS) lost up to 18%.
Jupiter’s JUP is the only token in the green with a 3.5% gain in the past 24 hours on the back of a decision to buy tokens from the open market from fees generated on its trading platform — which could equivalent to hundreds of millions in net purchase volumes a year.
Bitcoin falls below $99,000 early Monday as traders took profits ahead of the first US FOMC meeting this year. That followed losses in US stock futures, which fell as traders dug into information about the cost and capabilities of China-based DeepSeek, threatening an expensive narrative led by OpenAI.
Futures markets reflected these losses, with traders of BTC-tracked products losing $238 million over the past 24 hours, mostly in the early European and Asian afternoon hours. SOL and DOGE bets lost a combined $50 million, altcoin-tracked products lost $138 million and ether-tracked futures lost $84 million.
The largest single liquidation order occurred on HTX, a tether-margined BTC trade worth $98.4 million.
Liquidation occurs when a trader does not have enough funds to keep a leveraged trade open. The high volatility of the crypto market means that wipeouts are a common occurrence, although major events like Monday’s can provide actionable clues for further sentiment or market positioning.
Liquidation can signal 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 at which the price may reverse due to the absence of additional selling pressure from liquidated positions.
However, if the market continues to decline, those with short positions may see this as validation, possibly increasing their bets. Conversely, contrarian traders may view the heavy liquidation as a buying opportunity, hoping for a price recovery once the sell-off momentum subsides.
