On March 27, the rate $BTC dropped to $66,320 per coin, and the price $ETH decreased to $1,983 thousand. The prices of both assets leveled off at two-week lows — the drop occurred over a few hours, during which both cryptocurrencies lost about 4%.
Over the past four hours, cryptocurrency exchanges liquidated the positions of tens of thousands of traders for a total of $257 million, according to Coinglass. Of this amount, $247 million was related to long positions (longs) — those who bet on the rise of rates. The main losses were in the bitcoin and Ethereum markets — about $190 million. For comparison, over the course of a day, the total amount of liquidated trading positions was $450 million, almost $400 of which also consisted of longs.
This refers to the nominal value of positions considering leverage (a position of $100 with 10x leverage counts towards the total loss as $1000).
The decline in quotes in recent hours was not accompanied by any negative news background or the release of macroeconomic data.
On the night of March 27, the US again postponed strikes on Iran's energy facilities, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. He stated that he did this at the request of the Iranian government. However, later The Wall Street Journal reported, citing intermediaries in the negotiations, that Iran did not request a ten-day postponement of the strikes. According to analysts surveyed by The Block, the tension surrounding geopolitical events remains a dominant factor. It is noted that the conflicting signals regarding negotiations between the US and Iran, combined with ongoing military actions in the Middle East, keep the markets on edge.
The announced ten-day pause by the US has created, according to Rania Gule, a senior market analyst at XS.com, expectations for the markets, and the direction of movement depends on whether tensions will ease or intensify.
QCP Capital noted that cryptocurrencies continue to behave more like an asset sensitive to liquidity changes in financial markets rather than a safe haven for investors.
And yet, if we take the monthly time frame since the escalation of the conflict on February 28, the price of Bitcoin shows better results compared to major asset classes. Since the beginning of March, the price $BTC has hardly changed, even considering the current decline. The price of gold has collapsed by 16% during the same period, while the NASDAQ100 and S&P500 stock indices fell by about 6% each.