It came down as quickly as it went up.
Bitcoin's price was fast closing in on $70,000 per coin on Sunday, but whiffed on the potential feat. Instead, it started falling and dipped below the $67,000 mark late Monday morning—and derivatives traders are getting smashed as a result.
The biggest digital asset by market cap is now trading hands for $67,300, after dropping almost 2% over the past day.
Bitcoin's drop means futures traders who had gone long—or bet on its price to go up—have lost money. Over the past 24 hours, approximately $123 million in long positions have been liquidated across all cryptocurrencies, CoinGlass data shows.
Of that figure, nearly $47 million were Bitcoin positions. Total crypto liquidations over the last 24 hours now stand at $200 million, including short positions, with Ethereum edging out Bitcoin by less than $1 million in total.
The cryptocurrency started shooting up last week as Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), primarily those in the United States, starting seeing surging investment. Last week was the best week for the investment vehicles since July, European asset manager CoinShares said in a Monday report, with over $2.2 billion worth of inflows.
American investors feel more bullish that a Donald Trump presidency is likely, analysts have said. The former President and real estate mogul is taking another shot at the White House—and is fiercely pro-crypto. The Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, has been much slower to embrace the space.
Elsewhere, Ethereum's price is down about 1% over a 24-hour period at a current price of $2,670. Over the last week, though, it has climbed by nearly 2%. A Monday report from CoinShares said that investors still pumped money into funds giving exposure to the second-biggest coin last week, even though Ethereum ETFs haven't seen nearly as enthusiastic of an embrace as their Bitcoin counterparts.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
