Crypto liquidations reach $470M as Bitcoin retraces, altcoins surge

Bitcoin retreated after failing to break the $100,000 milestone on Nov. 24, causing one of the largest weekend crypto liquidation events in over half a year.

Over $470 million worth of crypto positions were liquidated over the last 24 hours. Long and short liquidations comprised $352.6 million and $119.9 million, respectively, with altcoins accounting for the vast majority of wiped positions, CoinGlass data shows.

Bitcoin BTC$97,460 and Ether ETH$3,340.39 accounted for a combined $108.9 million worth of liquidations, while Dogecoin DOGE$0.4193, XRP XRP$1.39 and Stellar XLM$0.5125 rounded out the top five with $33.1 million, $27.6 million and $21.6 million liquidated.

Solana SOL$250.11, Sandbox SAND$0.8262, Polkadot DOT$8.61 and Cardano ADA$0.986 saw the next largest liquidations.

It came as many of these altcoins from the 2020-2021 cycle unexpectedly outperformed across Nov. 23-24, increasing as high as 50% in XLM’s case.

The price rally also pushed DOGE to its highest point since May 2021 — the same month the memecoin skyrocketed to its all-time high, CoinGecko data shows.

Industry analyst Miles Deutscher believes more traders from the last cycle are re-opening their crypto wallets for the first time in a while and re-investing in tokens they’re familiar with.

Others pointed to these utility tokens trading below fair value in a barbell market that has seen Bitcoin and memecoins outperform thus far.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $97,790, down 2% from its all-time high of $99,645 on Nov. 22, when it came within striking distance of breaking $100,000.

Bitcoin’s price has rallied nearly 44% since Nov. 5, when Republican Donald Trump won the United States presidential election.

Bitcoin dominance is now at 56.2% of the total crypto market cap, worth $3.46 trillion, CoinGecko data shows.