Bitcoin price dipped below $ 60,000 last night and continued its sharp decline yesterday morning. In the process, on the Binance exchange, paired with USDT, the largest in terms of bitcoin trading volume, the price fell to $ 50,931.30, and on KuCoin, there was a collapse to $ 49,001.
The result of these movements was the liquidation of $ 9.12 billion in positions of traders in 12 hours. Bitcoin accounts for about half of the total. In the ether market, the daily range of which ranged from $ 2,340 to $ 1,950, the volume of liquidations exceeded $ 1 billion. After the decline, cryptocurrency rates quickly recovered: bitcoin to $ 56,000, and ether to $ 2,200.
During the day, the volume of liquidations reached $ 9.81 billion, which became the largest value in the history of the crypto market. The number of liquidated traders is estimated by the ByBt service at more than a million. The scale of today’s movement was largely influenced by the cascading liquidation of long positions, which is also evidenced by a sharp change in funding rates for futures to negative values. On the BitMEX exchange, for example, projected funding rates fell to -0.26%, which is comparable to the levels of March 2020, when bitcoin lost about half its value in a day.
The sharp and deep decline in the market again caused unexpected consequences in the space of decentralized finance, whose services at such times suffer from slow response and low liquidity. So, in the market for the decentralized protocol of perpetual contracts, the price of ether fell below $ 900.
At the same time, Bitcoin has closed all gaps on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) futures chart since March. Gaps occur when the price of a cryptocurrency changes while traditional markets are closed. As history shows, the price of bitcoin tends to return to breakpoints. A new gap was also formed at $ 61,980.
Meanwhile, rumors circulate online that the US Treasury Department is preparing to indict several financial institutions for money laundering through cryptocurrencies. The source of information is called lawyers familiar with the plans of the working group of the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Jake Chervinsky, a lawyer specializing in cryptocurrencies, considers this information to be unreliable:
I don’t find this credible. The tweet itself is fishy: Treasury doesn’t charge money laundering (DOJ does) & a case against several FIs at once would be unusual. Also, criminal investigations are kept strictly confidential & rarely leak. I’m not convinced by unnamed “sources.” https://t.co/71opA5cUby
— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) April 18, 2021
“The Ministry of Finance is not charging money laundering charges. This is the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice. Moreover, a case against several financial institutions would be unusual. Also, criminal investigations are kept in strict confidence and are rarely leaked. ”
“Imagine the crypto market crashed in a matter of minutes due to fake news,” writes analyst Alex Kruger. – This is probably the closest moment to Black Thursday in March 2020 of all that we will ever imagine. And yes, I am buying. ”

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