Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Long traders suffered huge losses on Thursday as the market gave up some of its recent profits.
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Bitcoin slipped below $119k while Ether failed to create a new all-time high.
BTC Drops Below $119k After Setting a New All-time High
It has been a rollercoaster 24 hours as the cryptocurrency market rallied and then dumped, resulting in over $1 billion in liquidations for traders. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market cap, hit a new all-time high of $124k during the early hours of Thursday, but gave up the profits after dropping below $119k, losing over 2% of its value.
The bearish performance comes after the US Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Thursday that the Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand in the US rose 3.3% on a yearly basis in July. This reading followed the 2.4% increase recorded in June and surpassed the market expectation of 2.5% by a wide margin. Furthermore, the annual core PPI rose 3.7% in July, up from 2.6% in June.
This data means that inflation in the United States remains high, creating uncertainty over a rate cut by the Fed next month.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was on its way to top its all-time high price of $4,891 but failed after losing 2% of its value and dropping below $4,700.
Dogecoin is the worst performer amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, down 7% since Thursday. Solana (5%), Cardano (6%), and XRP (5%) all took massive hits. Binance’s BNB set a new all-time high of $868 on Thursday, but is now trading around $850 per coin.
Data obtained from Coinglass revealed that $866 million in long positions were erased over the last 24 hours, more than six times the $140 million in shorts.
