Over $540M Liquidated As Bitcoin, Ethereum Plunges

Bitcoin (BTC) continued its bearish price action for the third consecutive day, with the leading cryptocurrency falling to a weekly low of $21,814 today, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

After a brief recovery, Bitcoin is now trading hands at around $21,785 a piece, down 6.9% on the day despite a 7.69% jump in daily trading volume.

The market value of Bitcoin has more than halved, plunging from $1.27 trillion in November last year to under $417 billion today.

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has also fallen to around $1,728, down 6.2% in the last 24 hours.

With a current market cap of $211.5 billion, ETH is down 64.49% from its all-time high of $4,891 recorded in November, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Amid the bearish price action, over $537 million from 156,155 traders have been liquidated in the crypto market over the past 24 hours, data from Coinglass.

Bitcoin leads liquidations with $201.3 million, followed by Ethereum with $132.7 million over the same period.

The vast majority of liquidations for the two leading cryptocurrencies came from blown long positions.

Other cryptocurrencies, incl Binance coin (8%), Solana (11.6%), Polygon (11.85%), and Avalanche (14.3%), have also posted huge losses in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin, Ethereum react to Fed

The market’s bearish price action is likely linked to the Fed’s expected rate hike next month and the reduced DeFi activity.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard favors a 0.75% rate hike by next month. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly also confirmed a rate hike of 0.50% or 0.75% next month. reported by Reuters.

Both have confirmed that prices can be raised as long as rising inflation is controlled.

User activity across all DeFi applications on Ethereum has also been negative over the past week, following concerns related to the upcoming merge event.

According to data from Dune Analyticsdecentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume has fallen 34% in the last 24 hours.

According to data from DefiLlamais the total value locked (TVL) across all blockchains down over 3.75% in the last 24 hours, indicating reduced user interest in DeFi.