The crypto market crashed hard over the past 24 hours, triggering $1.68 billion in liquidations as leveraged bets were wiped out on major exchanges, according to CoinGlass data.
Around 267,370 traders were forced to abandon their positions, with long positions accounting for an overwhelming $1.56 billion, or almost 93% of the total liquidations.
The shorts were just $118 million, showing how one-sided positioning had become before the decline.
Bitcoin and ether have caused damage. BTC alone saw around $780 million in liquidations, while ETH followed with over $414 million, per liquidation heatmap data. The biggest hit was an $80.57 million BTC-USDT position on HTX, a reminder that even ample liquidity doesn’t protect outsized leverage when momentum reverses.
The pain was concentrated on places of perpetual high density. Hyperliquid tops the list with $598 million in liquidations, more than 94% of which are long, reflecting how aggressively traders have turned to bullish bets. Bybit followed with $339 million, and Binance recorded $181 million, with long exposure dominating in all three.
Liquidations occur when leveraged traders can no longer meet margin requirements and exchanges forcefully close their positions to avoid further losses.
In fast markets, this becomes reflexive: forced selling drives prices down, which triggers more liquidations, fueling a cascade. This feedback loop is exactly what happened here.
For traders, liquidation data is important because it reveals where leverage was concentrated and where risk was eliminated.
Long and heavy liquidations often mark the liquidation of speculative excesses, the revision of financing rates and open interest. This does not mean that a bottom has been reached, but it does mean that weak hands have disappeared and future price action is less distorted by forced flows.
The broader takeaway is that this move was likely not driven by a new bearish conviction, but rather a breakdown in leverage. When almost everything on the board is long, the market doesn’t need bad news: it just needs gravity.
