Flash Crash! $100B Wiped From Crypto Market Cap In Three Hours

Cryptocurrency speculators are drowning in a sea of red today after a whopping $100B was wiped from the market cap of digital assets. The combined crypto market cap currently sits at $1.72T down from $1.82T three hours earlier.

Bitcoin (BTC) last changed hands for $42,500 after tanking 6% in three hours. The move comes after BTC tagged $45,900 on Dec. 2 — its highest level since April 2022. Ethereum (ETH) also tumbled 6% amid the violent flash crash.

Scott Melker, a trader and popular crypto influencer, attributed the move to excessive leverage getting flushed out of the digital asset markets.

“Open interest was mooning with historically high funding rates to be long [of] 66% annualized yesterday,” Melker tweeted. “We just saw $500M in liquidations, 95% of them longs in under an hour… Degens are going to degen.”

More than half of the top 100 digital assets by market cap suffered double-digit losses for the day. BONK suffered the heaviest retracement with an 18.6% pull-back over 24 hours.