Bitcoin and Ethereum See Notable Plunges as the Crypto Derivatives Market Suffers a High Amount of Liquidations

Cryptocurrency derivatives have seen a high volume of liquidations in the past 24 hours, as Bitcoin and other digital assets crashed.

Bitcoin, Ethereum Saw Notable Plunges During Past Day

The last 24 hours have seen a downturn in the prices of digital assets, with a majority of the market suffering a 5% or greater drawdown. Bitcoin has joined this trend, slipping below the $95,000 level.

Just a couple days ago, the asset showed a sharp recovery, climbing above the $102,000 mark. The steep crash since then suggests that investors may not have believed the rally would continue and opted to cash out their profits.

Relative Reading: Less Than 1% Of Bitcoin Investors In Loss After BTC Reclaims $100,000

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has seen an even steeper decline than Bitcoin, dropping to $3,350 after a nearly 8% decrease over the past day.

With this crash, Ethereum has almost entirely erased the bullish momentum that came with this new year (2025) for the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin still retains some of its gains, but if the current trajectory continues, it won’t be long before it meets a similar fate.

Given the carnage in the digital asset sector, it’s no surprise that the derivatives side of the market has also seen some chaos.

Crypto Longs Just Faced A Devastating Wipeout

Data from CoinGlass shows that a massive volume of liquidations piled up on derivatives exchanges in the past 24 hours.

“Liquidation” refers to the forced closure that any open contract undergoes after it has amassed losses of a certain extent (the exact percentage of which may differ between platforms).

The table below breaks down the relevant figures pertaining to the latest cryptocurrency liquidations.

A total of $689 million in contracts were liquidated in the last 24 hours, as indicated by the table. Of these, over $609 million of the positions involved were longs. This means that an overwhelming 88% of the liquidations affected the traders betting on a bullish outcome for the market.

Given the crash that the cryptocurrency sector underwent during this window, this disparity between long and short liquidations is to be expected.

Relative Reading: Crypto Liquidations Near $690 Million As Bitcoin, Ethereum Crash

In terms of the contributions to the squeeze by the individual symbols, Bitcoin surprisingly didn’t top the charts this time around. Instead, Ethereum took the lead with nearly $152 million in liquidations.

This is partly due to the fact that Ethereum’s drawdown was more significant than Bitcoin’s, but it may not be the whole story. It’s possible that the trend is an indication that the speculative interest around ETH has been particularly pronounced recently.