Pre-ETF Decision Volatility: Over $200M in Liquidations as Bitcoin, Ethereum Crash Hard

All eyes in the cryptocurrency community are set on the US Securities and Exchange Commission and its upcoming decision about VanEck’s Ethereum ETF application.

As it happened earlier this year when Bitcoin was in focus, the pre-decision volatility has already started with notable price declines for the top assets.

CryptoPotato reported on Monday the positive winds of change in the industry as Bloomberg’s ETF experts raised their previous prediction success rate for Ethereum’s ETF from 25% to 75%. This meant they believed such a product will see the light of day by the end of the current week.

After numerous delays and amendments, VanEck’s Ethereum ETF’s 19b-4 form is due for a decision today, and the US securities regulator has to reject or approve it.

Bloomberg’s Eric Banchunas opined earlier that he expects the SEC will come up with its answer at around 4 pm today, which is in around six hours from now.

My best guess is we hear from the SEC around 4pm tomorrow. For spot btc they dropped it at 3:45pm, some others in past were slightly after 4pm. Anything poss tho https://t.co/MzTOcsmTnJ

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) May 22, 2024

The markets have already started to feel the tension, with enhanced volatility in the past hour or so. ETH, for example, had soared to a multi-month peak of almost $3,950 earlier but corrected by about $200. It has now recovered some ground and stands at around $3,800.

Bitcoin was not sparred. The primary cryptocurrency challenged $70,000 today but saw little success. The subsequent rejection pushed it south hard to $67,600 minutes ago.

This volatility has led to over $220 million in liquidations in the cryptocurrency market on a daily scale. Nearly 80,000 over-leveraged traders have been wrecked in the same timeframe and the volatility is only expected to increase as the SEC announces its decision later tonight.