Hopes for a quick reversal from the weekend crypto plunge faltered on Monday with bitcoin (BTC) slipping all the way back below $110,000, just barely ahead of its then-euphoric price of $109,400 touched ahead of President Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
The largest crypto’s recovery attempt was quickly rejected at $113,000 during the U.S. session, and it fell precipitously to a seven-week low, CoinDesk price data shows. Recently, BTC traded at $109,700, down 2.7% over the past 24 hours and lower by about 7% since soaring above $117,000 in wake of Fed Chair Jay Powell’s dovish Friday Jackson Hole speech.
While major altcoins held up relatively well during the Sunday crash, they succumbed to the market weakness on Monday. Ethereum’s ether (ETH) plummeted nearly 8% over the past 24 hours below $4,400. Solana’s SOL (SOL), dogecoin (DOGE), Cardano (ADA), Chainlink (LINK) also declined 6%-8%.
Today’s price swing liquidated nearly $700 million in leveraged trading positions across all crypto derivatives, surpassing the Sunday flush, CoinGlass data shows. Some $627 million of the liquidated trades were longs anticipating higher prices.
What may further spook traders is weak seasonality as the end of August nears. September has brought historically the weakest returns for BTC and ETH with 3.77% and 6.42% losses on average for the month, respectively, per CoinGlass data.
UPDATE (Aug. 25, 20:28 UTC): Adds liquidation data by CoinGlass.