Yesterday Crypto Plunge Was Extremely Brutal for Traders, Social Media Data Says

Santiment, a feature-rich blockchain research platform, measures the sentiment of traders by analyzing messages on Crypto Twitter. It seems that yesterday there was little optimism there.

Too many "rekt" on social media

According to the statistics shared by Santiment on its main Twitter account, its automated analysis system registered an impressive spike of pessimism on Twitter.

🤦 The term #rekt has been skyrocketing in #crypto as long #liquidations were plentiful to end the week. As many traders were riding the upward price trend since late June, #Bitcoin's drop to $20.8k and #Ethereum's drop to the low $1,600's caused chaos. https://t.co/TrOUUnnTpt pic.twitter.com/QmSNP7EUn0

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) August 20, 2022

Over 24 hours, accounts on Crypto Twitter used the word "rekt" more frequently than throughout any other day of over a year. Namely, this metric exceeded that of the Terra (LUNA) collapse and the consecutive May-June sell-off.

The word "rekt" is among the most popular in crypto slang. It is a version of "wrecked" in broken English; traders use it to characterize forced liquidation of position or other types of failures in trading.

Yesterday, Aug. 19, 2022, Bitcoin (BTC) dropped to monthly lows below $20,800, while Ethereum (ETH) plummeted to $1,600, losing over 11% overnight.

Over $560 million in longs erased in 24 hours

According to the statistics shared by the Coinglass tracker (formerly Bybt), on Aug. 19, over $562 million in long positions were erased across all assets.

Also, $80 million in equivalent were lost by "shortists." It is interesting that the social media sentiment yesterday was way worse than June 13, when traders lost a whopping $1.15 billion in shorts and longs.

As such, yesterday was the second most painful day for crypto traders in Q2-Q3, 2022, in terms of aggregated volume of short/long liquidations across all assets.