Over $100 million of losses from liquidations were incurred by traders during Monday's market rout as digital asset prices fell in response to an escalating war in the Middle East.
Some $105 million of long positions - traders who bet that prices would rise - were wiped out yesterday, CoinGlass data shows. This was the largest amount of long liquidations in a day since Sept.11.
The liquidations occurred as crypto prices dipped as the fight between Israel and Hamas and the escalating turmoil in the region resulted in investors weighing risk assets. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset, fell more than 2% before climbing back to $27,600. At one point, ether slid almost 5% and large-cap cryptocurrencies solana, Polygon's native token and Polkadot's decreased 6% to 7%. They rebounded some later.
Liquidations happen when an exchange closes a leveraged trading position due to a partial or total loss of the trader's initial money down or'margin' because the trader doesn't meet the margin requirements or doesn't have enough money to keep the position open.
The loss of ETH derivatives traders took the brunt of the losses, as falling prices spurred $32.78 million of longs liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass. The largest single liquidation order, a $4.5 million ETH-BUSD long on Binance, was a $4.5 million long.
Some $18.25 million of BTC long positions were liquidated, followed by Bitcoin cash and Bancor's token, with more than $3 million liquidated for both.