{"id":38682,"date":"2026-03-21T00:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T00:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptomag.finance\/?p=38682"},"modified":"2026-03-21T00:00:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T00:00:34","slug":"over-half-a-billion-dollars-wiped-out-as-bitcoin-locks-in-at-70000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptomag.finance\/?p=38682","title":{"rendered":"Over Half A Billion Dollars Wiped Out As Bitcoin Locks In At $70,000"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whale wallets quietly shifted to buying mode over the past two weeks \u2014 even as the broader crypto market absorbed one of its worst single-day liquidation events in recent memory.<\/p>\n<h2>A Massive Options Expiry Freezes The Price<\/h2>\n<p>Friday\u2019s settlement of Deribit\u2019s March options contracts has effectively put <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coingecko.com\/en\/coins\/bitcoin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Bitcoin<\/a> on hold. The expiry involves 24,838 contracts with a combined notional value of $1.72 billion, and BTC has landed squarely at the $70,000 strike \u2014 the exact level known as \u201cmax pain,\u201d where the greatest number of options contracts expire worthless.<\/p>\n<p>That pins price in a tight band. Traders expect it to hold between $69,000 and $71,000 until contracts settle later today.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/info.arkm.com\/research\/crypto-trading-max-pain-price-theory-options-guide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Max pain<\/a> is not a coincidence. It describes the point where option sellers \u2014 typically institutional market makers \u2014 collect maximum losses from buyers.<\/p>\n<p>When open interest is concentrated enough, the market tends to drift toward that level as expiry approaches, and that appears to be exactly what happened this week.<\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin fell about 1.4% from midnight Thursday, landing at $70,000 by the time derivatives traders were watching closely.<\/p>\n<h2>Longs Got Crushed While Shorts Walked Away<\/h2>\n<p>The damage across the broader market was severe. Data shows 141,810 traders were liquidated over a 24-hour stretch, with total losses reaching $541 million.<\/p>\n<p>Long positions \u2014 bets that prices would rise \u2014 accounted for $443 million of that, or roughly 80% of the total. Short sellers, by contrast, lost only $97 million.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" class=\"wp-image-888294 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbtc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a_286489.png?resize=1024%2C538\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"538\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin led the wreckage at $191 million in liquidations. Ether followed at $165 million. The single largest loss was a $18 million ETH\/USDT position on the Aster exchange, wiped out in one move.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tradingview.com\/x\/mWDJhGSD\/\" width=\"1835\" height=\"951\" \/><br \/>\nOpen Interest, Futures Down<\/p>\n<p>The time breakdown tells the story clearly. The one-hour window showed relatively balanced liquidations at $18 million. But zoom out to four hours and the figure jumps to $126 million \u2014 and over 12 hours, it hit $300 million, almost entirely from leveraged buyers who got caught on the wrong side.<\/p>\n<p>Futures <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coinglass.com\/pro\/options\/OIStrike\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">open interest industry-wide fell<\/a> 5.6% to close to $107 billion. Ether futures dropped 9% alongside a 6% decline in spot price, a combination that points to capital leaving the market outright, not just prices falling.<\/p>\n<p>Funding rates for Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and BNB have all turned negative, a sign that short positions are back in demand across the board.<\/p>\n<p><em>Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whale wallets quietly shifted to buying mode over the past two weeks \u2014 even as the broader crypto market absorbed one of its worst single-day liquidation events in recent memory. A Massive Options Expiry Freezes The Price Friday\u2019s settlement of Deribit\u2019s March options contracts has effectively put Bitcoin on hold. The expiry involves 24,838 contracts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bitcoin"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Over Half A Billion Dollars Wiped Out As Bitcoin Locks In At $70,000 - Cryptomag<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cryptomag.finance\/?p=38682\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Over Half A Billion Dollars Wiped Out As Bitcoin Locks In At $70,000 - Cryptomag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Whale wallets quietly shifted to buying mode over the past two weeks \u2014 even as the broader crypto market absorbed one of its worst single-day liquidation events in recent memory. A Massive Options Expiry Freezes The Price Friday\u2019s settlement of Deribit\u2019s March options contracts has effectively put Bitcoin on hold. 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