• On March 2nd, 2023, Bitcoin’s price dropped below the $23,000 mark, leading to over $237.97 million in long liquidations on crypto derivative exchanges.
• 65 cryptocurrency derivative exchanges had a trading volume of $171 billion and an open interest for bitcoin futures of $9.06 billion on March 2nd.
• The highest liquidation occurred on Okx with a BTC/USD swap valued at around $4.16 million and Binance, Bybit, and Okx experienced the most liquidations out of all the exchanges.
Bitcoin Price Drop Causes Over $200 Million in Long Liquidations
On February 24th, 2023 Bitcoin’s price remained above the $23,000 threshold and then rose to a peak of $23,829 per unit on March 1st. Unfortunately, just one day later the price fell below this key level which caused a significant amount of long liquidations across various crypto derivative exchanges totaling over $237 million dollars.
Trading Volume and Open Interest Increase
Throughout February the trading volume and open interest for bitcoin futures increased drastically reaching a total of nearly 800 billion with Binance accounting for almost half that amount alone (468billion). The total open interest peaked at 9.73 billion on February 21st but has since decreased to 9.06 billion as of March 2nd .
Mostly Long Positions Liquidated
On March 2nd alone there were 206 million dollars worth of liquidations with 90% being long positions according to Coinglass reports. The largest single position was a BTC/USD swap on Okx valued at 4.16million dollars. Other major exchanges that experienced high liquidations include: Binance Bybit Huobi Coinex Deribit etc…
Liquidation Comparisons
The number of long positions that were liquidated on March 2nd due to this sudden drop in price was similar to what happened back when 254 million worth of long positions were wiped out back in February 8th . It was also comparable to when 190million worth of long positions were liquidated back on January 17th .
Short Positions Remain Steady
Despite these large losses from long traders , short traders have remained relatively steady betting against BTC’s potential rise with 9.2 million dollar short positions as recorded yesterday evening .