Crypto markets clear $300M in liquidations, with a Theta trader losing $11M

• More than 70,000 traders have been liquidated in the last 24 hours.
• A single trader’s loss has contributed to nearly 95% of all liquidations on the Theta network.

Last Thursday, as Russia announced its “military operation” into Ukraine, Bitcoin and crypto markets dipped massively, with many traders going into panic. Recovery, however, didn’t take long as markets snowballed into the new week, led by Terra (LUNA).

After blowing above its consolidation region of about $38,000, Bitcoin has been roaring upwards. It has gained more than 15% in the last 24 hours as it’s now trading $44,263, a spike of more than $10,000 in less than a week. The recent extreme fluctuations have resulted in massive liquidations across the sector

Data from cryptocurrency futures trading & information platform Coinglass indicates that more than 70,000 traders have been forcibly liquidated in the last 24 hours. With exact figures standing at 70,899 at the time of writing, $335.4 million has been washed away within this period.

Theta trader loses as much as $11 million

Coinglass also shows that the single largest liquidation yet hit a trader on decentralised video streaming network Theta. This crypto trader lost $11.08 million as the market defied their short and recovered by more than 20% from Monday’s prices.

The closure of his position contributes to a 94% proportion of the total $11.82 million liquidated on Theta within the last day. THETA stands out as one of the massively shorted assets, with $11.58 million worth of shorts on the Binance crypto exchange alone.

The THETA token met resistance around $3.4 early on Tuesday but has since retraced and is currently trading around $3.3.

For context, liquidation commonly affects investors trading in assets in high volatility markets such as crypto. A trader’s position gets liquidated (forcibly closed) if they are unable to meet the requirements of a leveraged margin, or rather, they cannot provide capital to fund their trading position.

Notwithstanding, such a huge loss on a single entity’s trade is a ‘near never’ in a network the size of Theta, given that the massives losses for futures traders are usually incurred by those tracking ETH or BTC.

In the last 24 hours, $161.24 million worth of BTC, $66.72 million in ETH, 15.73 million worth of LUNA and $6.46 million worth of SOL have been forcibly liquidated.