Bitcoins price tumbled by more than four grand in the past 12 hours or so amid reports that Mike Novogratzs Galaxy Digital has initiated a substantial sell-off for roughly $1.5 billion in BTC.

The move south has harmed over-leveraged traders, with nearly 150,000 such market participants getting liquidated on a daily scale.

The primary cryptocurrency remained in a relatively tight range between $117,000 and $120,000 for the past week, ever since it was pushed south from its latest all-time high of over $123,000.

It challenged the upper boundary on a couple of occasions on Wednesday and Thursday, but to no avail. The latest rejection, which took place hours ago, was particularly painful as it drove BTC south to its lowest price tag since July 11 at $115,000.

This violent correction appears to be at least partially related to Galaxy Digitals decision to dump a substantial portion of its BTC stash. As reported by Lookonchain, the Novograz-spearheaded company first deposited 10,000 BTC (valued at $1.18 billion at the time) to exchanges before initiating withdrawals of USDT.

Looks like #GalaxyDigital has already dumped the 10,000 $BTC($1.18B)!

Over the past 3 hours, theyve withdrawn 370M $USDT from #OKX, #Binance, and #Bybit.

Meanwhile, $BTC has dropped over 3% in the past 8 hours.https://t.co/SAD8JLS3TU pic.twitter.com/t0ETxWlw3s

In a follow-up, the analytics company said Galaxy deposited another 2,850 BTC ($330 million) to trading platforms, bringing the total to roughly $1.5 billion in bitcoin.

This enhanced volatility has harmed traders using high levels of leverage, as shown by CoinGlass. On a daily scale, the total value of wrecked positions is up to $515 million, with BTC leading the pack ($143 million).

The number of liquidated traders is over 140,000. The single-largest wrecked position took place on OKX and was valued at more than $17 million.

Liquidation Heat Map. Source: CoinGlass