Liquidations Top $255 Million as Bitcoin Recovers to $63K Ahead of Halving

Bitcoin has left a trail of $255 million worth of liquidations in its wake after it suddenly plummeted to $61,000 yesterday and took the rest of the market with it.

The Bitcoin price has shown some signs of recovery since yesterday, hitting a peak of just under $63,000 early Thursday. BTC is currently changing hands for around $62,750, down only 0.1% in the past 24 hours and 11.1% lower than it was this time last week, per data from CoinGecko.

The broader crypto market has moved on a similar trajectory; the global crypto market capitalization is now only 0.1% lower than it was this time yesterday and currently sitting at $2.4 trillion.

Thanks to yesterday's sudden Bitcoin slide, more than $255 million worth of futures contracts have been liquidiated, according to Coinglass. Exchanges and brokerages will liquidate, or force trades to close, their positions if they sustain heavy losses.

It's been an especially painful week for crypto derivatives traders. Over the weekend, more than $700 million worth of long contracts were forced to liquidate.

Long contracts allow traders to bet the price of an asset will increase and shorts are a way for them to bet it'll decrease. And in the past week, it's the optimists who've felt a lot of pain in this volatile pre-Bitcoin halving market.

But there's a bit of light ahead. Philip Swift, founder of Look Into Bitcoin, said on Twitter he thinks global liquidity improving could have an even more pronounced impact on markets than the halving. The next Bitcoin halving event is currently scheduled for late Friday night.

"I still think global liquidity breaking out will be an even bigger bullish driver for the rest of this cycle," Swift predicted early Thursday morning.

But it's unclear just how soon liquidity might improve. Bitcoin billionaire Arthur Hayes has been bearish on the halving because things have been looking so poor for liquidity. He recently said in a blog post that he fears the halving will "add propellant to a raging firesale of crypto assets."