Why Did Bitcoin Suddenly Flash Crash To $110,700 Yesterday?

Late Sunday night in Europe (August 24), Bitcoin abruptly slid from roughly $114,790 to $110,680 in about ten minutes — a drop of ~3.6% — earlier than stabilizing. On-chain watchers and derivatives dashboards level to a single massive vendor catalyzing the transfer and a cascade of lengthy liquidations ending the job.

Why Did Bitcoin Crash?

The primary thread of the story emerged on X from “Sani,” creator of TimechainIndex, who flagged a whale-scale cluster abruptly unloading stock by means of Hyperunite/Hyperliquid–linked pathways. In his phrases: “This entity liquidated their total 24k steadiness, sending all of it to Hyperunite. They transferred 12k simply as we speak and are nonetheless actively promoting, which is probably going contributing to the continuing worth drop.”

He adopted with the broader scope of the holdings and their provenance: This entity nonetheless holds a complete of 152,874 BTC throughout all related addresses, together with 5,266 BTC within the deal with proven beneath. The funds initially got here from HTX about six years in the past and had remained inactive till latest transactions involving considered one of their addresses containing roughly 24,000 BTC.”

Neighborhood replies captured the swirl of hypotheses round possession and intent. One consumer requested who these cash belong to. Sani ventured a guess, tying the origin again to historic Asian alternate flows: “Greatest guess Justin Sun since they got here from HTX, in all probability the cash bought by China 6 years in the past”

Some advised an alternate pockets given the sheer dimension. Nevertheless, Sani cautioned that funds had been being routed from the cluster to Hyperunite/Hyperliquid after which on to Binance — in a roundabout way from a Binance-owned pockets — arguing this sample made an in-house alternate pockets much less seemingly. “The funds are transferring from these addresses to Hyperunite to Binance so most likely not Binance, in the event that they had been theirs they’ll transfer on to Binance,” Sani argued.

One other datapoint including warmth to the narrative: flows into Ether. An account generally known as MLM (@mlmabc) tracked what it framed as an aggressive rotation: “This man is de facto rotating every thing into ETH huh? Up to now he has bought 18.142K BTC price $2.04B at present costs. He’s now promoting the final 5.968K BTC ($670M), of which 4.968K BTC ($678M) remains to be exterior Hyperliquid.”

He added: “Up to now, the two entities have purchased 416.598K ETH mixed (at present valued at $1.98B) and longed 135.263K ETH ($642M) on perps, for a complete notional ETH publicity of 551.861K ETH price $2.62B. Out of the 416.598K ETH ($1.98B), 275.5K ETH ($1.3B) has been staked.”

These flows didn’t materialize out of nowhere. Final week, Sani had already flagged the primary motion from one of many dormant addresses: “An deal with holding 23,969 BTC has simply moved 3,000 BTC after remaining dormant for 5 years. These funds had been initially withdrawn from HTX, totaling 170,703 BTC throughout a number of addresses, and I believe them to be linked to the cash bought by China on the time. Till yesterday, none of those funds had moved because the preliminary withdrawal.”

Futures positioning then turned a swift selloff right into a flush. Actual-time liquidation trackers confirmed lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in positions force-closed throughout the market into the downdraft, with BTC longs bearing the brunt. CoinGlass’ dashboards recorded $218.29 million in BTC lengthy liquidations on Sunday. Notably, this was the biggest liquidation occasion since August 1 ($231.77 million) and June 12 ($299.41 million).

Technical context added tinder. Sunday’s slide arrange a recent CME Bitcoin futures “weekend hole” that many short-term merchants treat as a magnet. As dealer Daan Crypto Trades cautioned on X: “If BTC had been to open up like this tomorrow, we’ll have a fairly sizeable hole. You’ve in all probability seen the observe report these gaps have been on the place we’ve closed just about all of them on Monday or didn’t even open up with a niche within the first place. Good stage to keep watch over. However as at all times, don’t solely base your evaluation on this single factor.”

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $112,511.