Crypto Market Sees $300 Million Liquidated as Bitcoin Briefly Drops Below $59,000

Fears over Mt. Gox disbursements, significant outflows from spot ETFs and miner selling sent the price of bitcoin lower.

Selling pressure on bitcoin intensified late on Monday as the leading digital asset’s price dropped to a low of $58,601 before recovering to around $61,000 at the time of writing.

Trading volume across major exchanges surged 150% over the last 24 hours to over $42 billion, with over $300 million liquidated across the crypto market as per data from CoinGlass.

The majority of those liquidated were betting on a higher price – around $114 million was liquidated from long positions on Binance and $80 million was liquidated from long positions on OKX.

There were a number of factors that likely contributed to the drawdown in bitcoin, which dropped under the $60,000 mark for the first time since early May.

Mt. Gox Rehabilitation Trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi notified creditors that the bankrupt crypto exchange would begin making repayments at the start of July. At the time of writing, Spot on Chain estimates that around $8.6 billion worth of bitcoin sits in the wallets controlled by Mt. Gox, making impending sell pressure from these distributions a real threat in the eyes of market participants.

Although sales by larger entities are typically made over-the-counter (OTC) and have a somewhat limited impact on price, pre-emptive retail selling was still a dominant theme driving market volatility.

Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) also had a negative day, with $174.45 million worth of outflows recorded on Monday, according to data from SosoValue. This marks the seventh consecutive day of outflows for these funds, which shaved off $1.2 billion from their total assets under management (AUM) last week.

According to CoinShares’ head of research James Butterfill, the $584 million worth of outflows from spot bitcoin ETFs highlights that “a true correction is underway.”

Meanwhile, the post-halving environment has expectedly resulted in Bitcoin miners selling a larger portion of their holdings to stay afloat amid higher competition and lower profit margins. Bitcoin miners sold 1,200 BTC on June 10, around the time when bitcoin was trading between $69,000 and $71,000.

With the price of the leading digital asset now significantly lower, all US bitcoin miners are currently underwater, making it far more likely that they will continue to sell their BTC stash.