coindesk.com
Bitcoin BTC$74,987.07 has seen sharp two-way moves in the last several hours, reminding traders why leverage can hurt.
The volatility came as the market digested two uncomfortable headlines. First, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia – AI bellwether and the largest stock by market cap – admitted to an affair with a woman U.S. officials believe was spying for China. Second, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said negotiations with Iran had stalled.
Digital assets, the only open market over the weekend, initially took them as risk-off developments.
The price action
Bitcoin fell to about $73,761 late Sunday, its lowest point since August, before recovering to trade above $75,000, according to CoinDesk data. Ether $ETH$2,142.70, the second-largest token by market value, crashed below $2,100 before bouncing back to $2,144 as of this writing.
The volatility set off a wave of forced selling in leveraged futures positions.
Crypto traders had more than $1 billion in positions liquidated in 24 hours, according to CoinGlass. Most of these happened over the last six hours or so.
Longs – traders betting prices would rise – accounted for $913 million of that total, meaning the market punished traders who had positioned for bullish price action.
Ether took the bigger hit relative to bitcoin. It saw $448 million in liquidations, nearly double bitcoin’s $272 million. The single largest liquidation order was also in $ETH, worth $48 million.
The Nvidia news
Nvidia’s board said it opened an independent investigation after reports that CEO Jensen Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang, a business executive whom U.S. intelligence agencies believe was passing information to Beijing.
Jensen Huang acknowledged the affair in a message to employees, writing that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologizing for the harm caused.
Nvidia said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets had been compromised, but said its inquiry would examine all available information. The board is overseeing the review with outside independent counsel.
The stakes are larger than a personal scandal. Nvidia sits at the center of the AI boom, which has galvanized risk-taking across all corners of the financial market, including crypto, in recent years.
The company is also at the center of the U.S.-China tech competition.
Washington restricts exports of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China, while Megaspeed, the company linked to Alice Huang, has been accused of helping restricted Chinese firms obtain Nvidia chips.
The tokenized stock market has responded negatively so far.
