Bitcoin Price Plunges Below $67,000, Crypto Market Sees $426 Million in Liquidations

Bitcoin’s price dropped to below $67,000 Tuesday morning, erasing gains made over the previous week.

Per data from CoinGecko, Bitcoin is down 4.6% on the day and 6% on the week, currently trading at $66,139.

The wider crypto market fell in lockstep with Bitcoin, with the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies dropping by 5.2% to $2.6 trillion, wiping over $122 billion from the market.

Barring stablecoins, the largest top 30 cryptocurrencies by market cap all dropped overnight, with Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, dropping by over 6% to $3,331. Among the top 30 tokens, Aptos and Bitcoin Cash posted the largest losses, down 13.5% and 9.9% respectively.

Across the entire crypto market, over $426 million was liquidated over the past 24 hours, with $342 million in long liquidations, per data from CoinGlass. Bitcoin alone saw over $90 million in longs liquidated overnight.

The price dip comes as the U.S. dollar index (DXY) topped 105 for the first time this year, reflecting a strong dollar; the index tracks the dollar’s value against six major foreign currencies, the Euro, Swiss franc, Japanese yen, Canadian dollar, British pound, and Swedish krona.

Tuesday’s price dip also comes amid heightened volatility in the crypto market ahead of April’s Bitcoin halving, in which the block reward allocated to miners is slashed in half. Although previous halvings have been followed by a surge in Bitcoin’s price, debate continues to rage over whether the halving is priced in, with some analysts pointing to a “crisis of faith” among traders ahead of the halving.

This year’s halving is also unusual, with Bitcoin having hit an all-time high ahead of the halving following the approval of multiple U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs in January. The resultant supply crunch caused by those ETFs buying up Bitcoin, alongside the halving, has been pointed to by analysts as a bullish indicator.

A new report from crypto exchange Coinbase, meanwhile, argues that Q2 will be positive for the crypto market, spurred on by elevated institutional interest in the crypto space following the Bitcoin ETFs’ approval.