$600 Million in Crypto Liquidated in Mass Sell-Offs

This week saw the crypto market cap contract once more in light of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. With geopolitical tensions compounding months of crypto stagnation, even committed hodlers are liquidating holdings in favor of less volatile stablecoins.

Market intelligence platform Coinglass has reported that nearly 1750,000 traders have liquidated crypto assets during the past 24 hours, amounting to a total value of $675.82 million. Indeed, this aligns with the overall shift in sentiment towards ‘risk-off’ trading across the markets. Generally, traders appear to be moving away from speculative assets to find security in safe havens.

In the cryptosphere, this was reflected in an increased demand for stablecoins. These tokens are deemed less volatile because their prices  are pinned to underlying commodities, currencies, or algorithms. As a result, dollar-pegged Tether, Binance USD, and USD Coin were amongst the top four tokens purchased between Thursday and Friday. Conversely, Bitcoin suffered a painful $259.62 million loss in market value. Altcoins Solana, Terra, Ripple, and Dogecoin also featured in the top sell-offs.

As the sands shift in the crypto markets, traders weigh up the prospect of buy-the-dip bargains against holding value in lower-volatility assets. At least the general shift to stablecoins implies that the crypto market isn’t being abandoned just yet.