Cryptocurrencies are rebounding this late this morning after selloff hours earlier — and the bounce-back may have been aided by Mark Zuckerberg’s goats.

Bitcoin, which had been trading around US$59,000 yesterday afternoon, plunged from over US$56,000 to $53,400 in less than half an hour around 6am AEST. Ether went from over US$4,000 to US$3,661 at the same time

But at 11am AEST both cryptos seemed to have stabilised, at least for now. BTC was trading around US$55,500 and Ether was changing hands at just under US$3,900.

Some were crediting a post this morning by the founder of Facebook for saving BTC and overall crypto market from a much worse drop.

Bitcoin rose from US$55,500 to US$56,200 in the minutes after Zuckerberg’s 8.35am AEST post.

There was some speculation about what “Max” might stand for — is Zuckerberg secretly a Bitcoin maximalist, despite his previous effort to start his own cryptocurrency??? — as well as a number of jokes.

But the speculation wasn’t entirely in jest. In late April there were rumours that Facebook would follow the lead of Tesla Motors and MicroStrategy and announce during its earnings call that it was holding Bitcoin on its books. It didn’t and Bitcoin dropped.

This latest post has renewed hope the social media giant might start buying BTC.

Overall market down

Of the top 100 coins on Coingecko, 90 were in the red over the past 24 hours to 11am AEST while just 10 had gained ground.

cryptomarket
Coin360

Piratechain was the top gainer, up 21.7 per cent to US$9.01, while Lisk was the worst loser, falling 24.6 per cent to US$8.13.

Telcoin and yearn.finance were the two top 100 coins to hit an all-time high this morning, while Nexo, Venus, Fantom, Ethereum, Litecoin, Chainlink, Leo Token, Binance Coin, Huobi Token, Lido Staked Ether, cEth and Gate Token did so yesterday afternoon, according to coingolive.com.

Dogecoin was trading at US46c, down 18 per cent from a day ago.

$2.3 billion in liquidations

According to Buybit, 224,927 cryptocurrency derivatives traders had been rekt in the past 24 hours, with US$1.78 billion ($2.3 billion) in positions liquidated, a one-week high.


There were actually nearly twice the value of Ethereum positions (US$13.3 million) wiped out as Bitcoin ones  (US$7.6 million).

(For those unfamiliar with the derivatives market: some use leverage to amplify their potential profits by factors of 10, 20 or even 100-fold. But if the market moves against them, they risk having their entire position liquidated, losing it all. It’s known as getting “rekt” or wrecked, slang taken from gaming).

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