At 12:40 A.M. UTC time Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped from $9,574 to $8,112 in the course of 15 minutes.
The 15.30% drop came after the top-ranked digital asset on CoinMarketCap struggled to reclaim the $9,800 support after falling below the support which formed the base of a bull pennant and was also aligned with a high volume node on the volume profile visible range indicator.
Crypto market weekly price chart. Source: Coin360
The unexpected drop is likely to have caught many traders off guard and data from Skew shows that BitMEX hourly liquidations reached $226 million.
BitMEX XBTUSD Liquidations. Source: Skew.com
Interestingly, the price bounced right off the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level, a point often referred to as the “golden pocket.” Traders appear to be quite interested in buying at this level as the Bitcoin price has bounced, trading at $8,600. Nevertheless, BTC still needs to gain above $8,800 to signal that a recovery is in the making.
The sudden drop also means that there is now a CME Bitcoin futures gap at just above $10,000.
Bitcoin weekly price chart. Source: Coin360
Altcoins were also dealt a heavy blow as the Bitcoin price dropped by $1,500. Currently, Ether (ETH) price is down 10.24%. Binance Coin (BNB) lost 11.58% and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) dropped by 12.44%.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $240 billion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 66.9%.