$61 million bitcoin whale liquidated on HTX as sentiment back at 'extreme fear'

Bitcoin's BTC$65,791.51 price losses on Monday wiped out a massive leveraged bullish bet.

The trade worth $61.5 million was forcibly closed by cryptocurrency exchange HTX, marking the largest single liquidation in the past 24 hours, according to data source Coinglass.

The so-called liquidation happened as bitcoin slid from Saturday's $68,600 high back to $64,400, erasing the weekend's gains in a matter of hours. CoinDesk reached out to HTX for comment.

The outsized hit — large enough to suggest a concentrated whale or fund position rather than a retail margin call — landed amid a broader wipeout that saw $467.64 million in total liquidations across 137,422 traders, according to CoinGlass. Long positions accounted for $434 million of that, roughly 93% of the total, pointing to a market that was still positioned for upside heading into the week and got flushed when bids disappeared.

Bitcoin futures alone saw $213.62 million in forced closures, followed by ether (ETH) at $113.89 million and solana (SOL) at $19.89 million. Hyperliquid's HYPE token added another $10.72 million, a notable figure for an asset outside the usual top-five liquidation leaderboard.

Fear reigns supreme

The selloff dragged Alternative.me's Crypto Fear and Greed Index back to 5 out of 100, a reading categorized as "extreme fear" that has only been matched three times since the index launched in 2018: August 2019, June 2022, and earlier this month during bitcoin's slide to $60,000.

Glassnode data reinforces the stress. The firm said Monday that the seven-day moving average for net realized losses among recent bitcoin buyers was still running near $500 million per day, meaning short-term holders are continuing to capitulate even after the initial February flush.

"While the intensity has cooled, the broader regime still signals a market under pressure," Glassnode noted, "with participants in the base formation phase continuing to capitulate."

Bitcoin now sits 48% below its October all-time high of $126,000 and 5.5% below its 2021 bull-market peak of $69,000 — a level that once felt like the ceiling and now looks like a floor that keeps getting tested. Monday's wreckage cleared leverage but the pattern remains intact: traders reload longs into every bounce, and the market keeps punishing them for it.