Dogecoin and Ether lead crypto market pullback as bulls take a breather

The crypto market slid in the past 24 hours as traders likely took profits after weeks of an uptrend.

Ether and dogecoin led the slide among major tokens, falling more than 5%, Cardano's ADA and Polygon's MATIC dropped 4%, while bitcoin lost just 1.6%, CoinDesk data show.

Such movements caused upward of $173 million in longs, or bets on higher token prices, to be liquidated. Ether futures saw $86 million in liquidations while traders of bitcoin futures lost $46 million, per data source Coinglass.

Outside of majors, avalanche (AVAX) fell 7.7% while lido (LDO) dropped over 10%, ending a multi-week bump that saw the token's value jump 135% in the past month. Meanwhile, a few tokens traded in the green, including those of interoperable blockchain platform Quant (QNT) and layer 1 network Aptos, with both rising over 4%.

The crypto market capitalization has decreased by 3.5% to just over $1 trillion in what appears to be a bull breather following a notable upswing. Strength in bitcoin and strong transactional activity among tokens such as SOL and ADA contributed to the crypto market regaining the $1 trillion capitalization mark earlier this month.

The pullback comes as U.S. equities fell on Tuesday after technical glitches at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) briefly disrupted market trading.

As such, some traders warned of an impending drop in the coming weeks.

"While the rally looks promising on paper, the reality is that there are still limited traders in the markets," analysts at Bitfinex wrote in a Jan.19 note sent to CoinDesk. "With the recent leg-up driven purely by sentiment, low funding rates and cascading short liquidations."