$200m in crypto liquidated following 50bps Fed rate cut

The cryptocurrency market witnessed an impressive bullish momentum after the long-awaited rate cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve, bringing increased liquidations.

According to data provided by Coinglass, the total crypto liquidations surged by 46% over the past day, reaching almost $200 million. Most of the liquidated positions, worth $126 million, are shorts due to the market-wide bullish movements.

Bitcoin (BTC) is leading the chart with $75 million in liquidations following a 2.9% price hike. BTC is currently trading around the $62,000 mark.

Notably, the largest single liquidation, worth $8.9 million in the BTC-USD pair, occurred on the Bybit crypto exchange, per Coinglass data. In total, over 66,000 traders have been liquidated in the past 24 hours.

Ethereum (ETH) took the second spot with over $35 million in liquidations as its price surpassed the $2,400 mark.

Despite the increased liquidations, the total crypto open interest rose by 4% in the last 24 hours and is currently hovering at $58.7 billion. 

Increasing open interest is usually a sign of FOMO — the fear of missing out — that could potentially boost the amount of liquidations, leading to high price fluctuations. At this point, investor sentiment has significantly increased.

The increased liquidations came after the U.S. Fed announced a 50-basis-point rate cut at 18:00 UTC on Sept. 18. This was the first Fed rate cut since March 2020.

Subsequently, the global crypto market cap increased by 1.9%, reaching $2.23 trillion, per data from CoinGecko. The daily trading volume surpassed the $120 billion mark. Moreover, the U.S. stock market also witnessed bullish momentum.