$1.34 Billion Liquidated Following the Tesla-Driven Bitcoin Rally

Today is yet another tumultuous day in the cryptocurrency market. The massive volatility, propelled by the fact that Elon Musk’s Tesla revealed a purchase of $1.5 billion in BTC, caused over $1.34 billion liquidated both long and short positions, though bulls had the upper hand.

• Things happen quickly in the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin was trading rather calmly earlier today, making progress towards the $40,000 level after failing to sustain it during the weekend.
• However, everything changed in less than two hours.
• As CryptoPotato reported, Tesla filed a Form 10-K with the SEC, disclosing a $1.5 billion investment in BTC earlier in January.
• The company also revealed that it might start accepting the primary cryptocurrency as means of payment for its products later on.
• This is how the price reacted:

• The price has seemingly stabilized around $43,500, though it surged to just shy of $45,000 in less than two hours.
• This has led to massive liquidations throughout the entire market – their total amount, at the time of this writing, stands at $1.33 billion for the past 24 hours.
• Most of the liquidated positions, currently, are long trades.
• However, in the past 4 hours (since the major price action unfolded) bulls have undoubtedly taken prevalence as 83% of the liquidations came from shorts.
• The largest single-order liquidation happened on BitMEX – it was a BTC position with a face value of $10 million.