Over $100M Liquidated In One Hour

Bitcoin’s price took a nosedive on Thursday after stocks retraced gains made following yesterday’s Federal Open Markets Committee Meeting (FOMC). It fell to $36,520 – the cryptocurrency’s lowest price since Russia invaded Ukraine. 

At FOMC on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced the first 0.5% interest rate hike since May of 2000. He set future expectations for further 50 basis point hikes later this year. 
However, he also claimed that 75 basis point hikes were mostly off the table. Both Bitcoin and stocks responded positively at the time, each pumping by roughly 2% each. 
The optimism appears short-lived, however: The S&P 500 has since lost those gains, down 3.3% on the day. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s price began to plunge at roughly 13:20 UTC, from about $39,400 down below $37,000 in 2 hours.
The crash appears to have coincided with a liquidation cascade. Coinglass reports $146 million in crypto liquidations within the past hour alone, with $68 million in Bitcoin losses. 
That’s over two-thirds of the liquidations to take place in the last 12 hours, and nearly half of the liquidations over the past day. 
The last time liquidations of this size took place was in mid-April, when mid-March’s hype around Terra’s Bitcoin buys appeared to die off.