Bitcoin (BTC) took an unexpected swoop today, plunging $600 in a affair of minutes. The plunge saw xv of the xx largest crypto assets past market place cap down 5% or more on this fourth dimension yesterday.

Crypto market place 1-solar day toll chart. Source: Coin360

The price drop began effectually 21:45 UTC when Bitcoin lost $800 in an hour. More than $100 meg worth of long contracts were liquidated on BitMEX solitary during the plunge. Joe Vezzani, the founder of crypto social analytics platform LunarCRUSH, tweeted:

"Watched the entire thing unfold. Saw a couple 7-10M liquidated longs come through. Big male child squeeze."

Hourly liquidations for BitMEX XBT/USD contracts. Source: Skew

Sharp contractions in Bitfinex shorts and longs

The crash saw a significant reduction in the number of both open longs and open up shorts on Bitfinex.

With the number of longs testing all time highs simply a few days ago, they plunged by virtually five% from 45,190 to 42,965 in less than lx minutes.

Open BTC longs on Bitfinex daily chart. Source: Trading View

Meanwhile, the number of open curt positions decreased by 6.iv% 12,675 to eleven,860. The driblet comes after shorts steadily increased for nearly six weeks after setting a new record low during early January.

Open up BTC shorts on Bitfinex daily chart. Source: Trading View

87 of Top 100 crypto assets endure daily losses

BTC's crash drove significant losses across almost leading markets today, with seven of the 10 largest alternative cryptocurrencies past capitalization posting 24-hour losses of between six% and 8%.

As of this writing, Tezos (XTZ) and Chainlink (LINK) are the merely leading cryptocurrencies to have outperformed BTC over the past day. While LINK is currently down nearly 3%, XTZ is the sole market amongst the acme 19 to mail a 24-60 minutes gain - currently upwards past iv.two%.

XTZ/USD 1-twenty-four hours price chart. Source: Coin360

EOS is the poorest performing of the 24-hour interval, sustaining an xi.8% drop against the dollar over the past solar day.

Looking at the crypto markets broadly, the Fright and Greed Index has dropped from 59 to fifty since Feb. 16, signaling that the market place may exist trending toward overselling.

Tether treasury mints 60 1000000 USDT

Some crypto analysts have speculated the crash may be related to $60 meg worth of USDT newly minted roughly thirteen hours agone.

The issuance took place approximately one hour before Binance's platform went downwardly for six hours of unscheduled maintenance, and followed several days' worth of reports noting that Binance was suffering from shortages of stablecoins for margin loans.

Go along track of top crypto markets in real time here