Did One Tweet Wipe $500B Off The Crypto Market In 24 Hours?

In the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency market saw $3.74 billion worth of liquidations from more than 341,000 traders.

What Happened: After Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk made an announcement on Twitter that the car company will no longer accept Bitcoin as means of payment over “energy efficiency concerns,” the market-leading digital asset shed $12,000 from its price.

The consensus was Musk’s announcement was the sole reason behind the sell-off, which triggered massive liquidations and wiped off $500 billion from the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies.

Why It Matters: Close to 90% of liquidations came from long positions, according to data from Bybit. Liquidation data also shows $3.05 billion was liquidated in just 12 hours, while over $96 million was liquidated in the past four hours alone.

Leveraged traders likely felt the most pain, as seen in the case of Huobi’s single largest liquidation which saw one trader lose $38.7 million on a BTC pair.

The resulting impact of Musk’s tweet inspired a significant amount of backlash from the crypto community.

“Many Bitcoiners were supporters and advocates for Tesla early on. Elon making uneducated comments to FUD Bitcoin will have financial consequences. I'm not sure I would ever buy another Tesla product again,” said Blockstream CEO Samson Mow on Twitter.

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