Bitcoin Holds Above $60,000 After Liquidation Wave, but Derivatives Turn Bearish
Bitcoin rebounded from a drop to about $61,300 and was recently near $62,500, while roughly $3 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated over two days. Derivatives positioning showed a bearish tilt, with heavy demand for downside protection around the $60,000 level.
What happened?
Bitcoin rebounded from a drop to about $61,300 and was recently near $62,500, while roughly $3 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated over two days. Derivatives positioning showed a bearish tilt, with heavy demand for downside protection around the $60,000 level.
Why it matters
Bitcoin steadied above $60,000 on Thursday after a sharp sell-off pushed the price to around $61,300 at 02:00 UTC before a recovery toward $62,500. The move came during a broad liquidation event, with about $3 billion in leveraged crypto positions wiped out over two days, including $1.7 billion in the latest 24-hour period cited by CoinDesk.
Bitcoin steadied above $60,000 on Thursday after a sharp sell-off pushed the price to around $61,300 at 02:00 UTC before a recovery toward $62,500. The move came during a broad liquidation event, with about $3 billion in leveraged crypto positions wiped out over two days, including $1.7 billion in the latest 24-hour period cited by CoinDesk.
The development matters because the price rebound did not erase signs of stress in market positioning. Total 24-hour futures volume rose 2.9% to $305 billion, while open interest fell 8.5% to $111.4 billion, suggesting leveraged positions were being unwound rather than broadly rebuilt after the decline.
Options markets also pointed to caution. Put skews strengthened in both bitcoin and ether, indicating that traders were paying more for downside protection. On Deribit, the $60,000 bitcoin put carried more than $1 billion in notional open interest, while the $55,000 put was the most actively traded options contract over the previous 24 hours.
The weakness extended beyond bitcoin. Ether was down 3% since midnight UTC and traded near $1,750, while several altcoins, including NEAR, ZEC and JUP, fell more than 13%. CoinDesk also noted that lower market depth in many altcoin pairs can make downward moves more pronounced when liquidations hit.
Solana stood out in the derivatives data. Its open interest climbed to a record 72.16 million tokens even as the price declined, a setup CoinDesk said typically points to aggressive short accumulation. SOL had also fallen below its February low, while bitcoin, ether and XRP remained above their comparable levels.