Over $300 million liquidated, as Bitcoin shows a 15% daily increase to $44,000

The latest Bitcoin’s 15% price surge in the 24 hours became its largest one in over a year. The world’s largest cryptocurrency soared by more than $6,000 since Monday to above $44,000 resulting in over $300 million worth of liquidations.

According to data from CoinGlass, crypto liquidations over a 24-hour period exceeded $325 million at the time of writing. A total of 68,736 traders were liquidated, with the majority being in short positions or betting on lower prices.

The single largest liquidation order took place on Binance with a Theta Network THETA/USDT trading pair, where the trader lost $11.08 million in a single trade. THETA is up an impressive 19% in the last 24 hours.

Over 81% of traders liquidated in the last day across crypto exchanges were in short positions. Crypto exchange OKX saw the largest number of liquidations, with $119.36 million shorts liquidated and $16 million long positions liquidated.

Total BTC liquidations in the last day exceeded $158.26 million, followed by Ethereum (ETH) which saw $63 million liquidated. Terra (LUNA) saw $15.43 million in liquidations after rising 22.35% over the last day.

Veteran investor Mark Mobius, founding partner of Mobius Capital Partners, said the recent rally in bitcoin can be attributed to Russians buying into the cryptocurrency.

“I would not be a buyer, but if I was a Russian I would be a buyer,” Mobius told CNBC on Tuesday. “I would say that’s the reason why bitcoin has shown strength now — because the Russians have a way of getting money out, getting their wealth out,” said Mobius.

Now, as the Western world unites in condemnation of Russia, and sanctions against the country tighten, markets are on the mend.

Ari Redbord of blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs, also told CNBC on Tuesday that Russia will turn to cryptocurrencies in an attempt to evade sanctions.

However, crypto can’t be used “on the scale that would come anywhere near for solving the sanctions problem,” said Redbord, who is head of legal and government affairs at the firm.

“There’s just not the liquidity there to really make a dent in terms of what Russia is facing right now,” he said.

Redbord also noted that most of the liquidity is at large crypto exchanges that have “robust compliance controls” to monitor transactions that would file suspicious activity reports.

Just one day after the invasion of Ukraine began, Bitcoin rebounded by 7% to a price over $38,000. Notably, Bitcoin trading against the Russian ruble is currently at a nine-month high, per data from analytics firm Kaiko.

The total crypto market recovered $200 billion, with the cryptocurrency market cap hitting $1.7 trillion on the same day. At the time of writing, the market’s total market cap is $1.8 trillion.