Crypto Bloodbath: $770M Liquidations as Bitcoin Drops Below $99K

Crypto markets witnessed a significant downturn in the past 24 hours, with over $770 million in bullish liquidations. This event was marked by a substantial decline in the prices of major cryptocurrencies, including Solana's SOL, Dogecoin, and XRP, which dropped by more than 10%. The overall market capitalization fell by 8.5% during Asian afternoon hours on Monday.

Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, slumped below $99,000 early Monday, tracking losses in U.S. stock futures. Traders took profits ahead of the first U.S. FOMC meeting this year, as information about the cost and capabilities of China-based DeepSeek threatened an otherwise costly narrative spearheaded by OpenAI.

The largest single liquidation order occurred on HTX, a tether-margined BTC trade valued at $98.4 million. This liquidation event can provide actionable cues about market sentiment and positioning. It can signal an overstretched market, indicating that a price correction has occurred, or it can be viewed as a buying opportunity by contrarian traders expecting a price recovery once the sell-off momentum wanes.

In the same period, over $800 million in liquidations were recorded, with $210 million worth of long positions liquidated in the last hour alone. This massive liquidation event highlights the high volatility of the crypto market and the importance of risk management for traders.

The impact of these liquidations extends beyond the major cryptocurrencies. Tokens outside of the top twenty and across different sectors showed similar woes, with memecoin Pepe (PEPE), layer 1 upstart Aptos (APT), Gate.io’s GATE, and AI Agent creation platform Virtuals (VIRTUALS) losing as much as 18%. Meanwhile, Jupiter’s JUP was the only token in green, with a 3.5% gain over the past 24 hours, following a decision to buy back tokens from the open market using fees generated on its trading platform.

Futures markets reflected these losses, with traders of BTC-tracked products losing $238 million in the past 24 hours. SOL and DOGE bets lost a cumulative $50 million, altcoin-tracked products lost $138 million, and ether-tracked futures lost $8