Share this article
BTC Briefly Dropped Below $40K on Huobi Amid Massive Liquidation
More than $3 billion in long positions were liquidated on Tuesday.
By Muyao Shen
Updated May 11, 2023, 4:39 p.m. Published Sep 7, 2021, 7:06 p.m.
Bitcoin , the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, sank below $40,000 on the crypto exchange Huobi, the lowest point of any major exchange during Tuesday’s crypto market correction.
The latest market sell-off sent bitcoin’s price to as low as $42,921.27 over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk 20 data. But according to TradingView and Huobi, bitcoin dropped to a shockingly low $39,818.18 on Huobi.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
One trader told CoinDesk the BTC/USDT pair on Huobi fell below $40,000 briefly because Tuesday’s correction triggered liquidations of billions of dollars of trading positions, the result of margin calls on major centralized exchanges.
At the time of publication, Huobi had not responded to a CoinDesk request for comment.
According to the crypto trading data site Bybt, centralized exchanges offering crypto futures liquidated more than $3 billion in long positions on Tuesday, as bitcoin’s price started dropping sharply earlier in the day.
Forced closure of long positions, or bullish trades, account for $3.22 billion, or over 90% of total liquidations, which shows the leverage skewed excessively bullish across the market. Liquidations happen when trades cannot fulfill margin requirements for holding long/short positions and often exacerbate bullish or bearish price trends.
It “looks like it was a standard de-leveraging event,” Rahul Rai, co-head of market neutral at crypto investment firm BlockTower Capital, told CoinDesk. “Huobi had the second most liquidations after Bybit ... more liquidations [means] spot bitcoin selling [and] bitcoin trades lower on Huobi.”
Data from Skew shows that more than $290 million worth of bitcoin futures positions were liquidated on Huobi, the second most behind Bybit.
The large forced closure of long positions also pushed bitcoin futures into backwardation – a market condition where futures trade at a discount to the spot price. As seen in the chart below, bitcoin futures traded at discounts on every major centralized exchange earlier Tuesday.
At press time, bitcoin was trading at $47,284.18, down 8.62% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk 20 data.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Japan’s Higher Rates Puts Bitcoin in the Crosshairs of a Yen Carry Unwind
A stronger yen typically coincides with de-risking across macro portfolios, and that dynamic could tighten liquidity conditions that recently helped bitcoin rebound from November’s lows.
What to know:
- The Bank of Japan is expected to raise interest rates to 0.75% at its December meeting, the highest since 1995, affecting global markets including cryptocurrencies.
- A stronger yen could lead to de-risking in macro portfolios, impacting liquidity conditions that have supported bitcoin's recent recovery.
- Governor Kazuo Ueda indicated a high probability of a rate hike, with officials prepared for further tightening if their economic outlook supports it.
Top Stories
