In just 15 minutes on the morning of April 18, the bitcoin rate fell by more than $ 7,000, which triggered a wave of liquidation of long positions.

The almost instantaneous collapse from $ 59 thousand to $ 51.5 thousand during the Asian session came as a surprise to the market. According to the bybt.com platform, in this hour alone, long positions in the cryptocurrency worth $ 4.3 billion were liquidated, and in total, the amount reached $ 9.2 billion per day.

The exact reason for this dramatic decline is unknown. A potential trigger could be a decrease in the network hash rate of a number of cryptocurrencies due to power supply problems in most Chinese mining pools. However, by the time of the collapse, the level of computing power had almost recovered.

Rumors of the US Treasury's plans to sue several financial institutions, accusing them of money laundering using digital assets, could also have worsened the market sentiment. Although there is no official confirmation or details of this yet.