After soaring above $93,000 per coin and touching a new all-time high on Wednesday, Bitcoin's price dropped hard on Thursday—bringing other top virtual currencies with it and wrecking plenty of long positions in the process.
The biggest digital asset by market cap is now trading for $87,805, a drop of over 6% in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko shows.
Ethereum's price dropped harder, and is down about 8% over the same period at a current price of $3,083.
The correction comes as investors wait for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to give a speech Thursday afternoon, where he's expected to signal next monetary policy moves for the U.S. Stocks market indices are also down slightly on the day.
Many crypto futures traders who had gone long—that is, betting on future prices to go up—on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other top assets have had their positions closed amid the crypto dip.
Over the past day, approximately $617 million in positions have been liquidated across all cryptocurrencies, CoinGlass data shows. Of that figure, $444 million were long positions.
As usual, Bitcoin made up the biggest chunk of the liquidations, accounting for $179 million worth—including $135 million in long positions.
Other major cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin also took a hit. The O.G. meme coin is now nearly 6% down a 24-hour period, trading for $0.39. Meanwhile, Solana's price has dipped by just over 2%, with the fifth-biggest coin now priced at $212.
Even with this dip, major digital coins and tokens are up significantly following Donald Trump’s Presidential election victory last week. The President-elect has promised to help the industry, claiming that under his watch, all future Bitcoin will be minted in the U.S. and the country will become the "crypto capital of the planet."
Edited by Andrew Hayward
