The cryptocurrency market got off to a bad start in November, with both Bitcoin and Ethereum plummeting, triggering massive liquidations and putting market confidence again under pressure. In the absence of positive macro catalysts, investor sentiment has clearly turned defensive, and the trading structure has also shown a stronger risk aversion tendency.
The price of Bitcoin fell more than 3% on Monday, falling from US$108,000 to US$105,000 in a short-term plunge, falling below the 200-day moving average, causing the market to start paying attention to the key support level below US$100,000. This round of selling pressure mainly comes from long-term holders. About 400,000 Bitcoins (about 2% of the circulation) were sold during October. However, the price of Bitcoin did not retrace deeper, showing that the demand side still has a certain capacity to undertake. Analysts pointed out that the new market structure (supplied by spot ETFs, large capital accounts and long-term savings wallets) is different from past cycles, causing volatility to converge slightly. However, "resilience ≠ reversal", before there is a positive change in the macro environment, it is still difficult to say that the certainty of a rebound has been established.
Ethereum's decline was even more severe, with the largest intraday drop of nearly 9%, falling below the key support level of $3,600, and a cumulative decline of approximately 25% since the August high of $4,885. Funding pressure has also appeared simultaneously: the perpetual contract funding rate has continued to weaken since mid-October, and many exchanges have turned negative, meaning that short sellers need to pay for their positions, reflecting that the market's bearish sentiment is heating up. Deribit data shows that positions in Ethereum put options expiring on November 28 have increased significantly, especially at strike prices below $3,700, $3,500, and $3,000, indicating that more traders are betting on further declines.
While technical pressures on the chain and the market are superimposed, unexpected security incidents also affect investor sentiment. Balancer, the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem, was exposed to a hacker attack on Monday, with losses potentially exceeding $100 million, becoming the latest in a series of bad news over the past few weeks. At the same time, stocks related to crypto assets were also under pressure, with Circle (CRCL.US) falling more than 7%, Coinbase (COIN.US) falling more than 3.8%, and Strategy (MSTR.US) falling 1.8%.
Judging from derivatives and clearing data, the market's lethality is obvious. Coinglass data shows that a total of 319,433 positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, with an amount of more than US$1.2 billion, of which long positions accounted for more than 90%, reaching US$1.1 billion, and short positions were liquidated for only about US$115 million. Within an hour of the short-term plunge of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the total liquidation amount of the two exceeded US$100 million.