Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP plummet as liquidations reach $500 million, while stocks rise

Cryptocurrency prices fell sharply again on Friday, with Bitcoin dipping below the $90,000 mark, while Ethereum flirted with a dip below the $3,000 mark, as crypto liquidations piled up across the board.

Bitcoin fell to $88,420 on Friday morning and recently traded at $89,215, marking a decline of more than 3% in the past 24 hours, as the leading cryptocurrency plunged from a price above the $92,000 level.

It’s the second big plunge for Bitcoin in the past week, after the coin plunged below the $85,000 mark on Monday before recovering sharply the next day.

That continues a trend in which Bitcoin has been particularly volatile in recent weeks, including a plunge to a seven-month low of around $81,000 in late November. That slump followed a new all-time high for Bitcoin of $126,080, reached in early October. Bitcoin is now down almost 30% since setting that record.

As is often the case, other major altcoins show sharper losses that day. Ethereum is down more than 4% to a recent price of $3,021, while XRP is down 4% to $2.03. Solana is down almost 7% to $132, while Dogecoin is also down about 7% to a price below $0.14.

According to data from CoinGlass, liquidations over the past day amounted to over $493 million, at the time of writing, after being right at the $500 million mark not too long ago. Bitcoin leads the carnage with $191 million in liquidations, and the vast majority – $412 million – of the total liquidations were long positions, or bets that the price of an asset will rise.

Why crypto prices are falling again is not immediately clear, especially as major stock indexes are slightly green on the day, with the S&P 500 nearing a new all-time high, while traders increasingly expect a third rate cut for the year at next week’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

However, crypto-centric stocks are falling along with digital assets, with Bitcoin miner CleanSpark (CLSK) down 8%, while others like Bitfarms (BITF) and Hive Digital (HIVE) both fell around 5% on the day. Coinbase (COIN) is down less than 1% on the day, with Strategy (MSTR) and Robinhood (HOOD) both down about 3%.