Crypto traders hoping the market would catch up with the global stock rally cried Wednesday as a sharp price drop triggered the biggest selloff event since early February.
Around $1.84 billion in crypto leveraged positions were liquidated in the last 24 hours in the form of bitcoin. plunged below $66,000 and ether (ETH) fell below $1,900, the largest single-day wipeout since February 5 and a near-pure wave of long bets, with long positions taking $1.66 billion of the total and short positions just $180 million, according to CoinGlass data.
A liquidation occurs when an exchange automatically closes a leveraged trade because the trader’s losses have exceeded the collateral they provided to open it. Long positions bet on prices rising, while short positions bet on prices falling.
Long Bitcoin positions absorbed $883.66 million in damage, Ether another $475.73 million and Solana (SOL) $91.18 million, with the remaining $390 million split between HYPE, DOGE, SUI, BNB, NEAR, AAVE, LINK and the broader top 30 long books.
The largest order was a $59.67 million BTC-USDT long run on HTX.
Binance accounted for $748 million of the total liquidations, or about 41% of the cascade, with 89% of those positions long. Hyperliquide transacted $314 million with 94% long positions, and Bybit recorded $247 million with 93% long positions.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s open interest, the total value of all unsettled leveraged futures contracts, actually increased during the cascade.
The number of contracts fell from around 759,000 BTC to 788,600 BTC even as the long ledger was being cleared, according to CoinGlass data. An increase in open interest in the face of a decline in price may indicate that new short positions are opening rather than long positions closing, signaling that new bearish bets are accumulating above the long suit rather than the cascade finding a clearing level.
The distribution of positioning is unequal depending on the type of trader. Retail Bitcoin traders on Binance, OKX, and Bybit are still long with ratios of 2.22, 2.01, and 1.58 respectively, refusing to capitulate even after the wipe, while whale accounts on OKX have moved to a long-short ratio of 0.54 that CoinGlass considers “extremely bearish.”
Overall buyer volume during the period showed $65.39 billion in sales versus $60.16 billion in purchases, with sellers being the marginal players.
OI increasing to a falling price, retail still leaning long, and whale accounts going short on OKX all indicate a market that has not found an equilibrium level. A break below $65,000 puts $60,000 at stake; a catch opens the door for a rebound relief, but the positioning data argues against rebounding being the more likely outcome.
