BTC dropped below $50,000 as $2 billion in crypto long positions liquidated

The price of bitcoin has dropped below $50,000 again while $2 billion worth-of crypto futures long positions have been liquidated over the past hour.

Data shows that the price started to plunge around 22:00 UTC time on Wednesday and dropped to as low as $46,000 on Coinbase Pro. It has quickly bounced back to around $51,000 as of press time.

Meanwhile, data from Bybt shows that around $2 billion in crypto futures long positions have been liquidated in the last one hour with $1.12 billion of them coming from BTC.

Indeed, the broader crypto market is also seeing significant drops over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap are all falling with 5% to 17% drops with Dogecoin leading the plunge.

The Shiba Inu meme-coin is now changing hands at $0.4, down 40% from its recent high above $0.7. Shib, the other Shiba meme-coin that was hailed as a rival of Dogecoin, has also plunged by 30% within the past 24 hours to $0.00001853, which is down more than 50% from its recent high amid a Dog coin phenomenal over the past week.

The market's price reaction also came shortly after Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla will stop taking bitcoin for electrical car payments due to environmental concerns.

Musk said in a tweet on 22:06 UTC on Wednesday that Tesla is concerned about the "rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal." 

The suspension announcement came just less than two months after Musk confirmed on Twitter that Tesla was going to accept bitcoin as a payment option.