Crypto Market Bloodbath: $249 Million Worth of Longs Wiped Out in Mere Hours

According to data provided by CoinGlass, a whopping $249 million worth of long positions has been liquidated over the past 24 hours. 

This comes after the cryptocurrency plunged to an intraday low of $96,891, according to CoinGecko data.  

The reason behind the crash 

Bitcoin's massive price drop came after a sharp increase in the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield. 

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) released its latest report earlier today, which showed that the December Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for the private service sector was 54.1 in December, up from 52.1 in November. Notably, it was way above the consensus forecast of 53.5.

U.S. equities experienced a sharp drop following the release of this data due to inflation concerns. 

The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index is down 1.3% while the flagship S&P 500 index has slipped by 0.57%. 

The shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR), Bitcoin's biggest corporate holder, have plunged by nearly 9% this Tuesday. 

A big fat nothing? 

Even though the price index of the ISM services survey was terrible for risk assets, Oliver Allen, senior US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, believes that this data might not necessarily be indicative of stickier-than-expected inflation.   

"The index is pretty volatile and often swings up and down without this ever showing up in the inflation numbers. We had a similar scare last January that ended up being a big fat nothing," he said in a post on the X social media network.