A critical support breakdown wipes out leveraged traders while long-term holders sell and institutions increase exposure.
More than 246,000 traders were liquidated over the past 24 hours, with total losses surpassing $1.1 billion after Bitcoin broke a key support level and plunged below $97,000 early Friday.
The vast majority of losses came from long positions, where leveraged traders were wiped out for more than $968 million, according to CoinGlass data.
BTC Breaks 365-Day MA
Roughly $300 million in leveraged long crypto positions were erased in a single hour after Bitcoin failed to hold its 365-day moving average, a critical technical and psychological support near $102,000.
The drop to $97,000 triggered heavy selling and cascading liquidations. Historically, losing this level has signaled deeper downturns, and analysts at CryptoQuant warn that failing to reclaim it could open the door to a sharper correction.
Real-time liquidation maps showed widespread forced exits across exchanges when BTC fell toward $97,700, an area where millions in leveraged long positions were concentrated.
Bitcoin slid more than 7.6% from $103,000 to $96,100 early Friday morning in Europe, before staging a modest rebound. At the time of writing, BTC is hovering around $97,300.
Long-Term Holders Sell, Institutions Quietly Buy the Dip
CryptoQuant data shows that long-term holders have sold more than 815,000 BTC over the past 30 days, marking their largest offload since January and raising concerns about increasingly thin liquidity zones across the market.
Analysts say the Bitcoin market is firmly in a bearish phase, driven by three main factors: fading momentum after the massive October 10 liquidation event that erased more than $19 billion in less than a day, a brief drop in spot demand, and slowing stablecoin liquidity.
Despite the selling pressure, not all investors are exiting. Lookonchain reports that some institutions are buying the dip.
Over the past nine hours, Anchorage Digital received 4,094 BTC ($405 million) from Coinbase, Cumberland, Galaxy Digital, and Wintermute.
Why this matters
The loss of key support levels combined with heavy long-side liquidations could accelerate Bitcoin’s downward momentum in an already fragile market.
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