Bybit CEO Ben Zhou has challenged studies that as we speak’s crypto market liquidations totaled simply $2 billion. As a substitute, Zhou prompt that the precise determine might vary between $8 billion and $10 billion.
The alternate CEO pointed to Bybit’s inner knowledge, which recorded $2.1 billion in liquidations on the platform alone during the last 24 hours. This determine far exceeds the $333 million listed on Coinglass, suggesting a big underreporting situation.
Zhou acknowledged that exchanges, together with Bybit, impose API restrictions that restrict how ceaselessly the info is up to date.
He pledged to boost transparency by making certain Bybit publishes full liquidation data transferring ahead.
Knowledge distortion
Zhou’s assertion aligns with Vetle Lunde, head of analysis at K33 Analysis, who argued that liquidation knowledge has been unreliable since mid-2021.
He defined that important exchanges, together with Binance, OKX, and Bybit, have carried out restrictions on their WebSocket APIs, limiting liquidation studies to at least one per second. This coverage considerably underrepresents precise volumes.
Liquidations happen when merchants can not maintain leveraged positions as a result of inadequate funds. Whereas that is frequent in crypto’s risky market, the size of as we speak’s wipeout ranks among the many largest in latest reminiscence. It exceeds the liquidations triggered by the Terra/Luna implosion and the FTX collapse.
Liquidation knowledge is an important indicator of market sentiment, leverage publicity, and danger developments. Nonetheless, some exchanges could desire to obscure the total extent of liquidations to keep up dealer confidence.
Lunde argued that revealing the correct scale of losses might deter customers, whereas managed reporting gives exchanges with a strategic benefit.
Moreover, particular buying and selling platforms have affiliations with funding corporations that profit from selective market knowledge.
Lunde concluded:
“You’ll be able to hallucinate and guestimate primarily based on liquidation quantity dominance and the related exchanges’ open curiosity dominance pre-API change. This method offers a extra reasonable liquidation quantity estimate, however it’s nonetheless mistaken because it fails to account for altering conduct by market individuals over the previous three years whereas additionally exaggerating odd distinctive liquidations at sure exchanges.”