BTC slides as fear index hits 5, $489M in positions wiped out

Bitcoin erased weekend gains on Monday as the Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell to 5 out of 100 and crypto exchanges logged $489 million in liquidations, with 89% hitting long positions.

The pullback accelerated after Bitcoin briefly reached $68,600 on Saturday. The token then retreated toward support near the lower end of a trading range that formed following a Feb. 6 drop to around $60,000. Alternative.me’s sentiment gauge now reads “extreme fear.”

Data from CoinGlass showed total liquidations of $489 million over 24 hours at the time of writing, largely impacting traders who had used leverage to bet on higher prices. The washout came after the weekend bounce faded.

On-chain analytics firm Glassnode reported that the seven-day moving average of net realized losses for recent holders was still near $480 million per day, pointing to continued selling. “While the intensity has cooled, the broader regime still signals a market under pressure, with participants in the base formation phase continuing to capitulate,” the firm wrote.

Analyst Michaël van de Poppe highlighted that Bitcoin’s Sharpe Ratio has fallen to -38.4, a level he views as historically aligned with “low risk” accumulation areas. The Sharpe Ratio compares return with volatility to show how much return investors receive per unit of risk.

The Fear & Greed Index has reached a reading of 5 only three times since it launched in 2018: August 2019, June 2022 and earlier this month. Bitcoin remains range-bound since the Feb. 6 sell-off, with the latest decline unwinding gains made over the weekend.

As we reported earlier, worldwide Google searches for “Bitcoin going to zero” hit their highest level since early November 2022, coinciding with a pullback from Bitcoin’s recent record and a shift to “extreme fear” on the Bitcoin Fear & Greed Index. At the same time, sovereign funds such as Abu Dhabi and some corporations increased stakes in spot Bitcoin ETFs.