Crypto Bloodbath: $800M in Liquidations as Top Coins Plunge

Crypto markets witnessed a significant wave of liquidations over the past 24 hours, with over $800 million in bullish positions being closed out. This figure includes a staggering $210 million in liquidations that occurred in just the last hour alone. The market-wide sell-off was led by major cryptocurrencies such as Solana's SOL and Dogecoin (DOGE), which both dropped by more than 10%. Other notable losses included Ether (ETH), BNB Chain's BNB, XRP, and Cardano's ADA, which fell by up to 9%.

The market cap of the overall crypto market fell by 8.5% during Asian afternoon hours on Monday, reflecting the broad-based sell-off. Tokens outside the top 20 and across various sectors also experienced similar declines, with memecoin Pepe (PEPE), layer 1 upstart Aptos (APT), Gate.io's GATE, and AI Agent creation platform Virtuals (VIRTUALS) losing up to 18%.

Jupiter's JUP was the only token to buck the trend, gaining 3.5% over the past 24 hours. This gain was attributed to a decision to buy back tokens from the open market using fees generated on its trading platform, which could potentially amount to hundreds of millions in net buying volumes over the course of a year.

Bitcoin slumped below $99,000 early on Monday as traders took profits ahead of the first U.S. FOMC meeting of the year. The decline in Bitcoin tracked losses in U.S. stock futures, which fell as traders digested information about the cost and capabilities of China-based DeepSeek, threatening an otherwise costly narrative spearheaded by OpenAI.

Futures markets reflected these losses, with traders of BTC-tracked products losing $238 million in the past 24 hours, primarily during early European and Asian afternoon hours. SOL and DOGE bets lost a cumulative $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 valued at $98.4 million. Liquidations occur when a trader has insufficient funds to keep a leveraged trade open. The crypto market's high volatility means