Bitcoin Briefly Dips Below $61k, Causing $450m in Long Liquidations

TL;DR

• BTC is down 3% in the last 24 hours and slightly dropped below the $61k level on Tuesday.

• The bearish performance saw over $450 million of long positions liquidated. 

BTC Makes a Poor Start to October

October is usually a positive month for Bitcoin and the broader market, but that hasn’t happened so far. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market cap, lost 3% of its value on the first day of October.

Thanks to this negative performance, Bitcoin’s price dropped below the $61k level for the first time in over a week. It has slightly recovered and is now trading above $61,800 per coin.

The Israel-Iran tensions continue negatively affecting the financial markets, and Bitcoin is no exception. Iran launched missiles on key Israeli locations on Tuesday, and the latter threatened retaliation in the coming days.

Iran’s strike was in response to Israel first carrying out a series of attacks on Lebanon in the past weeks. With the ongoing tension in the Middle East, equities and risk assets such as bitcoin are underperforming.

With yesterday’s negative performances, futures tied to leading cryptocurrencies saw over $450 million in long liquidations in the last 24 hours. While BTC is only down 3%, other major altcoins recorded larger losses.

Ether lost 6% of its value in the last 24 hours and is trading below $2,500 per coin. Dogecoin is the worst performer amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, losing 8% of its value in recent hours.

Thanks to the bearish performance, the total cryptocurrency market cap has dropped below $2.2 trillion after losing 4% of its value in the last 24 hours.