Bitcoin Rontok, Funds Worth IDR 4 Trillion Liquidated

JAKARTA - Bitcoin experienced a significant decline at the start of today's Asian trading hours. This decline comes as the turmoil in the global stock market sparked a weakening of sentiment towards risky assets such as cryptocurrencies.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell from more than US$65,500 (Rp1,048,000,000) to nearly US$64,000 (Rp1,024,000,000) in just a few minutes at the start of trading in Tokyo. This sharp decline resulted in more than US$250 million (Rp4 trillion) in bullish bets being liquidated, which was the worst liquidation figure since early July.

Liquidation occurs when the exchange forcibly closes the leverage position of a trader due to partial loss or the entire initial margin of the trader. This data is important for traders as a signal that leverage has been effectively removed from popular futures products, which could be an indication of a decrease in price volatility in the short term.

The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) broad index, which tracks the largest token by cap, minus stablecoin, fell by 3.3%. The long Ether (ETH) position suffered the biggest loss with a value of 100 million US dollars (Rp1.6 trillion), driven by a 7.5% decrease in tokens amid the newly launched ETF ETH.

Binance recorded the highest liquidation among exchanges with a value of 118 million US dollars (Rp1.888 trillion), of which 88% were trading with long positions. OKX and Huobi, popular among Asian traders, recorded 94% of their long position traders liquidated.

This decline occurred when shares of US technology collapsed on Wednesday, causing the Nasdaq 100 index to contain many technology stocks to fall 660 points, the biggest decline since 2022.

The mixed quarterly revenues from Alphabet (GOOG) and Tesla (TSLA) caused the shares of the two companies to close down to 12% on Wednesday; on aggregate, tech stocks called "Magnificent 7" lost more than $750 billion in market capitalization on Wednesday, which is the biggest loss ever recorded for this group.

Losses expanded to the Asian market on Thursday morning as Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell more than 3% amid concerns that the Bank of Japan could raise interest rates.

It doesn't stop there, Ethereum Spot's ETF investment product which is expected to boost the market has actually slipped. According to a report from Cryptoslate, the outflow from the newly launched ETF ETH product reached more than US$50 million (Rp800 billion) in the first two days of trading. This reflects the broader uncertainty in today's crypto market.