Crypto bulls endure second-biggest liquidation day in October

Crypto bulls who bet the market would continue to rise saw the second-biggest day of liquidations in October, with the market steadying after Bitcoin’s drop pulled down the price of major cryptocurrencies.

The liquidations come as some traders were optimistic Bitcoin could continue to rise as its price neared $70,000 on Oct. 21 — its highest in three months — but it failed to sustain momentum and fell to a low of $65,500 on Oct. 23 before recovering to $67,386, up 0.5% over 24 hours.

Meanwhile, ETH posted the biggest loss out of the top 10 cryptocurrencies, down 1.7% on the day to $2,552, falling from a 24-hour high of $2,620. It had climbed to a two-month high of $2,750 on Oct. 21 before dropping.

Onchain data shows Ethereum’s high transaction fees are disincentivizing activity on the blockchain, which reduces the demand for ETH staking and could be damping investor optimism.

Bitcoin’s rollercoaster day seemingly didn’t put off institutional investors, with the 11 United States-based spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) again seeing a joint net inflow on Oct. 23, per CoinGlass.

Together, the funds saw $198.5 million in net inflows, carried by a $323.6 million inflow to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF but doused by a $99 million and $25.2 million in outflows from the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF and the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, respectively.

The US Bitcoin ETFs saw a seven-trading day inflow streak from Oct. 11 to Oct. 21, where nearly $2.7 billion was added to the funds — but an $87.9 million net outflow on Oct. 22 broke it.