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$7.6B in crypto long positions liquidated in 1 hour as Bitcoin plunges to $52k

54 points| awb | 5 years ago |theblockcrypto.com | reply

96 comments

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[+] burlesona|5 years ago|reply
It’s interesting and a little surprising to me that people selling almost $8 billion in BTC found ready buyers such that the market clearing price only dropped 10%. That’s a lot of money to move, and implies that a lot of other people saw this as a chance to buy a dip.
[+] ullevaal|5 years ago|reply
Yes, for someone whose prior has been: “The price will crater and most people will lose interest”, I think that the thousands of hours of developer time and institutional interest is probably starting to pay of in terms of more mature markets.

I still have problems with the idea that people are able to pick the correct winners. When the blockchain finally gets its killer mainstream app, why not do a new ICO on a restarted blockchain instead of a billion dollar wealth transfer to early adopters?

[+] cperciva|5 years ago|reply
You're assuming that there actually was $8B in transactions. It's possible that there was $800M in transactions and $7.2B in tape painting.
[+] Traster|5 years ago|reply
Alternatively it could be as simple as lots of people having a crap execution strategy. I’m sure there are thousands of people who just have orders in the book that got swept and others with simple python scripts that “buy the dip” with no concept of risk or stop loss. The question is whether those people need to get out of their positions in the next few days causing a further drop or whether they can hold in which case the price will stabilise and eventually continue to run up.
[+] purple_ferret|5 years ago|reply
Or look at it this way, 8 billion gives you a lot of buying power if you're going 10x+ long. How much of this market is propped up by these speculators
[+] tedunangst|5 years ago|reply
I think these were futures contracts?
[+] tgtweak|5 years ago|reply
This is the reality of leveraged trading.

If you've put up your crypto as collateral on a loan, which you used to buy more crypto (defi), and the price of the asset backing your loan drops below threshold it gets auto liquidated by the holder and your loan is cancelled out. It is automated in all cases with triggers and varying thresholds.

Majority of these are 75-85% ratio which means if btc dips 15-25%, all of those providers liquidate the asset to cover.

Btc has also been holding at 60k for a while while alts are enjoying a rally as they tend to do when everyone leverages their btc gains via the aforementioned to buy into alts.

I'm surprised it didn't crash further but I guess the defi bubble wasn't as big.

[+] Godel_unicode|5 years ago|reply
> Majority of these are 75-85% ratio...

How do you know that?

[+] beforeolives|5 years ago|reply
It could be up to 100k in a week, could be down to 20k or anything in between. I honestly have no idea which one is more likely and wouldn't be surprised by any price, high or low. I'm also very skeptical of anyone who claims to know what's happening in the cryptocurrency market and why.
[+] treeman79|5 years ago|reply
Zero to infinite. Good arguments all around.

If governments decide it’s a threat I imagine it’ll go to near zero. Much to my personal shock that doesn’t seem to be happening.

[+] emerged|5 years ago|reply
Yet some random idiot who put $2k into coinx 2 years ago will feel brilliant the rest of their life for their incredible, deep conceptual $3M achievement. That idiot now has tremendous economic power to further spread the entropy for many years to come. The effects of crypto are going to ripple through time.
[+] mam3|5 years ago|reply
Basically doge is going to the moon (to 1dollar at least) thanks to elon, and rune is the best defi protocol.

Other than that...

[+] patentatt|5 years ago|reply
What I hate about Bitcoin is that I have absolutely no idea if this is 1) a good dip to buy, or 2) the start of a much bigger crash. Everything I understand about the topic and the world at large tells me it should be #2, but in retrospect it always winds up being #1. Am I passing up free money today? Or am I smart not to gamble in such an obviously rigged game? Will I look back years from now longingly and wish that I had bought, or smugly and glad that I didn’t. I have absolutely no indication one way or the other. Source: played around with crypto a lot 5-6 years ago, got out of it, and could retire today if I had held.
[+] polote|5 years ago|reply
How is that different from the stock market ? Maybe you have 'more ideas' but that would not prevent you to be wrong. In both case nobody can predict what will happen next
[+] throwaway_kufu|5 years ago|reply
> Or am I smart not to gamble in such an obviously rigged game?

This can not be understated. Everything about “crypto currencies” and NFTs are a complete and total rig job. It’s not even hidden by the large SV capital, simply justified on the basis that...so what it’s the same thing the markets or art collectors have always done.

Instead of backroom dealings, it all takes place in chat rooms and discord servers. I’ll admit as somewhat of an artist I thought I’d submit my work to a “invite only” NFT marketplace and sure enough I get a DM from one of the most prolific and successful artists shaking me down for Bitcoin in exchange for the invite promising me a minimum amount in monthly NFT sales. Of course thinking that was a potential scam, I inquired about the pay to play and was not only told how the whole thing works from the founders down to these “anonymous” NFT collectors on Twitter run by the marketplaces themselves, and to confirm it I posted a tweet immediately liked by one such profile (to put in perspective the profile had bought an NFT from Musk’s partner for I think around $750k).

I never sent the Bitcoin on the basis of being disgusted with the whole thing, which in hindsight makes me a complete moron. Everyday as I see “artists” thanking the anonymous Twitter account for changing their life with a purchase of their NFT or how they are in tears because they can pay their student loan off...I consider giving the discord art submission, dm, and tweet to the news media...but then I realize they don’t care they probably are in on it too, or at least would calculate the amount of money on ad revenue and clicks they would lose if they exposed this scam and they could no longer write daily stories about NFTs.

You can definitely make money, just always remember it is a repeat of the gold rush and just marketing to poor people about life changing opportunity and gold so plentiful you can just pickup nuggets as large as your head, all you need to do if move to their town and buy their shovels. If you have no morals about it the better bet is to tell them you aren’t much of a digger but one hell of a shovel salesmen with a wink.

[+] scsilver|5 years ago|reply
Buy a ticket, dont put in much. Adjust over time. I think the foolish point of view is to look at it as black and white. And whatever you do, don't rob yourself of participation in a meme, fun is not a zero sum game.

I regret every time I invest in being smug.

[+] xondono|5 years ago|reply
That’s how bubbles work. IMHO, the best case scenario for crypto is that they are the web companies of the 2000s, so there’s a chance some of them will become an amazingly profitable investment, while most will go the way of pets.com. And that’s the best case.
[+] bradleyjg|5 years ago|reply
If you don’t have any thesis beyond “hey, it could go up,” then you are gambling. That doesn’t mean you’ll lose, sometimes gambles pay off.

You should no more feel bad about not having won gambling on btc than you do about not having picked the winning lotto numbers last week.

[+] jdhn|5 years ago|reply
I buy $15 worth of bitcoin every 2 weeks, so $30 a month. I'm not comfortable investing any more than that. So far this has worked out really well for me because I never invest more than I'm comfortable losing, and therefore feel immune to crashes.
[+] oliver-was-here|5 years ago|reply
For me it’s not a question of either or. In or out.

I limit my exposure to 10%. Hate crypto or not, it’s earned its right to be treated as a legitimate investment class. The reason to diversify are due to the exact same reasons you’re expressing. If I were to liquidate my positions, I’d do so over a period of time rather than all at once - likely keeping some exposure.

IMO, if you’re investing in any equity trying to “time it,” or get rich quick, you’re taking as big of a risk as having exposure in crypto to begin with.

[+] hooande|5 years ago|reply
if you legitimately have no idea, then you don't have any more information than the market does. why would you trade at all?
[+] Avalaxy|5 years ago|reply
Spread your chances. Buy some now, buy some again later when it crashes even further. If it doesnt crash further, at least you profited from the current dip.
[+] candiddevmike|5 years ago|reply
All crypto coins are fundamentally the same thing, easy to create or fork, and not backed by anything permanent like a government, so the value of them should approach zero over time. There's nothing supporting BTC's price, and I'm of the mindset there are shenanigans occurring to keep it afloat.
[+] HashBasher|5 years ago|reply
Easy to copy the coin, hard to copy the network effect.
[+] rasz|5 years ago|reply
At current scale of operation and amount of money changing hands Im surprised we dont hear about rival groups hiring mercenaries to disrupt competitor mining operations. Couple millions should be enough for a team to go in, burn down a warehouse full of mining gear and blow up a substation or even full power plant for good measure.
[+] r0m4n0|5 years ago|reply
You can say the same thing with most trading cards but there always seems to be some second hand market that no one understands.
[+] haolez|5 years ago|reply
I'm waiting for a Tether collapse to create my long position, but I'm starting to feel like Michael Burry in the Big Short: the market can remain irrational for a long time.
[+] aent|5 years ago|reply
They have a deadline in about a month to reveal what exactly their "reserves" are comprised of, could be the moment.
[+] kolinko|5 years ago|reply
If/when Tether collapses people will escape it en masse into bitcoin and ethereum.

Paradoxically, it can lead to the prices in crypto shooting up, not down.

[+] creepto|5 years ago|reply
Have puts on all of the miners and Microstrategy.

Months out, enough time for Bitfinex to get curbstomped by the DOJ, CFTC, or NYAG.

Also enough time for them to expire worthless.

[+] unyttigfjelltol|5 years ago|reply
Serious question: why does a reduction in hash rate lead to a loss of USD pricing? That's analogous to pricing USD based on the number of lights on at the NY Federal Reserve at 10pm on Tuesday. I recognize hash rate moves these markets, but seriously, why?
[+] dylkil|5 years ago|reply
>why does a reduction in hash rate lead to a loss of USD pricing

it doesnt

[+] jpalomaki|5 years ago|reply
Value of Bitcoin is a matter of belief. There’s absolutely no way of putting a justified price tag for the coin (at least for now).

It can be that people just thought others might think the China news would be bad and therefore decided to sell. In speculative market you are all the time trying to guess what others are thinking.

[+] aent|5 years ago|reply
Nothing a healthy 5 billion USDT injection can't fix, just wait a few days.
[+] bitcoinmonger|5 years ago|reply
Seemed inevitable.

I first found out about Bitcoin in 2017, but didn't have time to fully understand the technology, so I brushed it off as a curiosity and moved on. I heard about it again in November at the start of the price increase, but upon further analysis decided not to invest due to the fossil fuels required to secure the network (I extend my thanks to Stephen Diehl for his thorough and nuanced introspection of the technology).

I feel sorry for those who have lost money at this time, but I am thankful to have had the foresight to avoid this inevitable price crash.

[+] peter422|5 years ago|reply
Remember folks: If the price goes up, that’s good. If it goes down then you can buy more at a discount, which is also good.

It’s a great system where nothing can go wrong.

[+] awb|5 years ago|reply
Is this sarcasm? Any investment can go to 0, or go down and stay down.
[+] mstipetic|5 years ago|reply
If you’ve been in the game 30 minutes and you don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy
[+] iso1631|5 years ago|reply
Said the people laughing at those who bought in at $20k in 2017/18
[+] basicallydan|5 years ago|reply
Predictable angry comment about the stupidly large ad on this site for eToro: apparently my thumbs are too fat to close it, when do I get my complimentary dialling wand?

So fat in fact that it opens the ad no matter what I do, only to be told that eToro is not even available in my country.

So not only do I see a massive ad that makes the article hard to read, I can’t even close it, and it’s for a product I can’t buy.

I hate this, and everybody involved in implementing it should be ashamed of themselves.

[+] testing_1_2_3_4|5 years ago|reply
What's interesting about this is I could see it coming a few days ago. Funding rates on FTX were super high, so you could see people were getting reckless with leverage leading up to this.