Crypto bulls cop second-biggest liquidation day in October

Crypto bulls who bet the market would continue to rise have seen the second-largest day of liquidations in October, with the market now steady after Bitcoin’s drop pulled down the price of major cryptocurrencies.

Total crypto liquidations reached $261 million on Oct. 23, with over $203.5 million coming from long bets — second place to the $450.8 million worth of crypto longs liquidated on Oct. 1 when Bitcoin ( BTC ) dropped by around 5%, CoinGlass data shows.

Ether ( ETH ) long bets had the biggest liquidation day, with over $77 million nixed over the last 24 hours, followed by around $58.3 million in Bitcoin call options.

The liquidations come as traders were optimistic that Bitcoin could continue to rise as its price neared $70,000 on Oct. 21 — its highest in three months — but it failed to sustain momentum and fell to a low of $65,500 on Oct. 23 before recovering to $67,386, up 0.5% over 24 hours.

Meanwhile, ETH has posted the biggest loss out of the top ten cryptocurrencies, down 1.7% on the day to $2,552, falling from a 24-hour high of $2,620. It had climbed to a two-month high of $2,750 on Oct. 21 before its fall.

Onchain data shows Ethereum’s high transaction fees are disincentivizing activity on the blockchain, which reduces the demand for ETH staking and could be damping investor optimism.

Related: Bitcoin forecast to hit $200K by end of 2025: Bernstein

Bitcoin’s rollercoaster day seemingly didn’t put off institutional investors, with the 11 United States-based spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) again seeing a joint net inflow on Oct. 23, per CoinGlass.

Together, the funds saw $198.5 million in net inflows, carried by a $323.6 million inflow to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) but doused by a $99 million and $25.2 million in outflows from the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB), respectively.

The US Bitcoin ETFs saw a seven-trading day inflow streak from Oct. 11 to Oct. 21, where nearly $2.7 billion was added to the funds — but an $87.9 million net outflow on Oct. 22 broke the streak.

Magazine: DeFi and Ethereum are the ‘new narrative’: Michaël van de Poppe, X Hall of Flame