Bitcoin’s price action on Sunday was chaotic after a wave of whale-led sell orders triggered a rapid $2,000 drop, mass liquidations, and an equally aggressive rebound.
The move wiped out both long and short traders within hours, raising new concerns about low liquidity manipulation and order book vulnerabilities as Bitcoin continues to hover above $91,000.
Sponsored Sponsored
$1.39 billion in Bitcoin released within 1 hour
Analysts reported a selloff that appears to have seen more than 15,565 BTC (worth about $1.39 billion) flow into the market in one hour.
“This is why the market has been nuclear attacked. Whale released 4,551 BTC, Coinbase released 2,613 BTC, Wintermute released 2,581 BTC, Binance released 2,044 BTC, BitM EX released 1,932 BTC and Fidelity released 1,844 BTC. A total of 15,565 BTC worth $1.39 billion was released. “This was a full-fledged drop in one hour,” analyst Wimar wrote in a post.
At the same time, a surge in supply to the market accelerated Bitcoin’s decline from $89,700 to $87,700, setting the stage for a series of liquidations.
Longs and shorts wiped out, resulting in $171 million in liquidations
The initial sharp drop wiped out $171 million worth of BTC longs, but it caught Bitcoin off guard as it dropped $2,000 in minutes, before rebounding with the same force. As of this writing, the price of Bitcoin is $91,494.
This rapid recovery has resulted in approximately $14 million in short positions being liquidated in the past hour, and more than $91 million in the past four hours.
Sponsored Sponsored
“This is another example of a leveraged operation that wipes out both longs and shorts on a weekend when liquidity is low,” Bull Theory said.
Coinglass data confirms the scale of the damage. In the past 24 hours, 121,628 traders were liquidated, bringing the total amount liquidated to $346.67 million.
Traders call this “engineered liquidity collection”
Market commentators said this was not normal volatility, and Marto insisted that the sequence of events was no coincidence.
Sponsored Sponsored
“People keep calling this volatility volatility, but it’s not. This is an engineered liquidity pull. When the order book is weak, whales move prices like the hinges of a door, taking cash from both sides,” he wrote.
Others pointed to the speed of the recovery, with Rennie, a trader known for tracking liquidity flows, commenting on the whipsaw.
“To be honest, the drop in BTC to 89,000 was quickly absorbed. It’s not noise,” Rennie said.
This rapid uptake suggests that strong spot demand remains in place despite aggressive leverage flushes continuing at weekend lows.
Sponsored Sponsored
Can Bitcoin maintain $90,000?
Bitcoin prices are recovering from weekend losses, but are still showing signs of significant intraday stress. The double liquidations show that weekend order volumes remain low for large companies that can move billions of dollars in minutes.
Spot demand is likely to stabilize price movements over the next week, especially as liquidity normalizes and derivatives markets reset.
Bitcoin enters the next trading session deleveraged on the back of more than $300 million in liquidations, but also with increased sensitivity to further whale-driven moves.
Meanwhile, data shows that $1 billion of short positions are at risk of being liquidated if Bitcoin price rises to $93,000.
Notably, the $93,000 threshold is just 2% above current levels.
