Mt. Gox Payouts Intensify Selling: Crypto Asset Liquidations Reach $665 Million

Over the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency market has seen more than $665 million in liquidations as Bitcoin faces strong selling pressure, and Mt. Gox continues to take action for payouts.

In the last 24 hours, it has dropped by 7.4% to $54,199 at the time of publication. The price drop occurred after the defunct cryptocurrency exchange transferred Bitcoins worth approximately $2.7 billion, preparing for payouts to creditors, which are due to begin early this month.

According to Coinglass, a total of 230,541 traders were liquidated in the last 24 hours, and the total amount of liquidations on centralized exchanges was $665.8 million.

Bitcoin was the leader in liquidations among cryptocurrencies, with more than $222.1 million liquidated in the last 24 hours. Among these Bitcoin liquidations, approximately $181.8 million were long positions.

Ethereum also encountered significant liquidations, with $163.4 million liquidated, of which $143.3 million were long positions, the data showed. The price of Ethereum fell by 10.57% in the last 24 hours to $2,890.

A crypto liquidation occurs when a trader's positions in the cryptocurrency market are forcibly closed due to significant losses or the lack of sufficient margin to meet maintenance requirements.

On Thursday evening, Mt. Gox transferred 47,228.7 BTC ($2.71 billion) to a wallet address, which soon sent back 2,702 BTC and transferred 44,527 BTC to another address, according to blockchain tracker Arkham. A few hours later, another address associated with Mt. Gox transferred 1,545 BTC ($85 million) to a hot wallet at Bitbank, Arkham data showed.

Peter Chang, head of research at Presto Research, said that the selling pressure could be stronger for BCH than for BTC, "considering that BCH does not have as strong an investor base as BTC, so Mt. Gox creditors will likely try to cash out immediately, as with any other distribution."

"Volatility and periods of selling do not change the fundamental thesis of Bitcoin," said Ben Kazelin, marketing director at VALR, a Pantera-backed cryptocurrency exchange. "If we're lucky, we might expect prices below $50,000 or even slightly lower in the next few weeks... but nothing fundamental has changed in the market structure, and the current price movements actually only concern short-term speculators."