Crypto liquidations reached $806.44 million in the past 24 hours, wiping out leveraged positions at a scale not seen in weeks.
The liquidation cascade followed a steep drawdown in prices: Bitcoin fell from an opening level of $114,163 to a close near $111,931, with intraday extremes stretching from $114,373 down to $110,802.
Ethereum mirrored this move, sliding from $4,784 to $4,635, with a trading range between $4,798 and $4,621. Both lost more than 2.5% on the day.
Long positions were hit the hardest. Of the $807.44 million total liquidations, $642.45 million came from longs, compared to $162.4 million from shorts. Bitcoin accounted for $267.85 million of the total, while Ethereum was close behind at $263.41 million.
The near parity between BTC and ETH liquidations shows that speculative interest is still concentrated in these two assets, which made up more than two-thirds of all liquidations in the past 24 hours.
Bybit was the epicenter of forced closures, responsible for $304 million in liquidations, 87% of which were long positions. Binance followed with $209 million in liquidations, again skewed toward longs at over 75%. OKX saw $117 million flushed out, while smaller platforms like Gate and HTX contributed tens of millions more.
Interestingly, Bitfinex and Bitmex were the outliers where short positions dominated liquidations. This tells us that exchange-specific positioning can deviate sharply from the general market.
The scale of long liquidations points to the overextension of bullish leverage at elevated price levels. Traders had been building directional bets on continued strength, especially given Ethereum’s new peak over the weekend. But, when Bitcoin failed to sustain above $114,000 and Ethereum slipped below $4,700, cascading margin calls triggered forced sell orders.
This intensified the downside move and reinforced the feedback loop of liquidation-driven selling pressure. The largest single order during this period occurred on OKX, with a BTC-USDT swap liquidation valued at $12.49 million.
The weight of BTC and ETH is clearly seen in the liquidation heatmap. Together, they accounted for over $530 million in forced closures.
Other large-cap tokens like Solana and Dogecoin were hit as well, though at much smaller magnitudes, reflecting their lower share of speculative leverage.
Altcoins with thinner liquidity pools saw pockets of sharp forced selling, but the dominant theme of the day was the structural unwinding of BTC and ETH leverage.