The recent crypto market correction may have liquidated up to $10 billion worth of capital, eclipsing previous estimates, according to Bybit’s CEO.
More than $2.24 billion was liquidated from the crypto markets in 24 hours on Feb. 3, according to CoinGlass data.
Crypto liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass
Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou, however, said the real figure may be five times larger.
“Bybit’s 24hr liquidation alone was $2.1 billion,” Zhou wrote in a Feb. 3 X post.
“I am afraid that today’s real total liquidation is a lot more than $2 billion, by my estimation, it should be at least around $8 billion -10 billion,” he said.
Liquidation estimates. Source: Ben Zhou
The multibillion-dollar crypto liquidation event occurred amid growing macroeconomic concerns over a potential global trade war days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose import tariffs on goods from China, Canada and Mexico, according to a Feb. 1 statement from the White House.
Related: Bitcoin bottoms at $91.5K on global trade war fears, highlighting economic concerns
Crypto liquidation data discrepancy caused by API limitations
The differences in the crypto liquidation figures were likely caused by limitations in the application programming interfaces (API) of the cryptocurrency exchanges.
This is what caused platforms like CoinGlass to report Bybit’s liquidations at $333 million instead of the actual $2.1 billion figure, Zhou said, adding:
“We have API limitation on how many feeds are pushed out per second. From my observation, other exchanges also practice the same to limit liquidation data.”
“Moving forward, Bybit will start to PUSH all liquidation data. We believe in transparency,” Zhou said.
Bybit API limitations. Source: Ben Zhou
Related: Bitcoin ETFs surpass $125B, BlackRock's IBIT ranks 31st worldwide
Over 730,000 traders were caught in the multibillion-dollar crypto liquidation event.
The biggest single liquidation order was recorded on crypto exchange Binance for an ETH/BTC trading pair valued at $25.6 million, according to CoinGlass data.
However, some traders made millions from the current crypto market correction.
On Feb. 2. a savvy trader made nearly $16 million on his 50x leveraged short position, which was effectively betting on Ether’s (ETH) price decline.
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