Crypto market traders took a beating from both sides Monday afternoon, with over $400 million in liquidations on long and short positions in the last 4 hours.
Bitcoin rose from $67,500 to more than $71,200 Monday afternoon after U.S. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he had asked the Pentagon to postpone all strikes on Iranian power plants for five days, saying the U.S. and Iran had “very good and productive conversations.”
Then, Iran would have denied everything.
“There is no direct or indirect communication with Trump,” Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported, citing an anonymous source, adding that Trump “backed off after learning that our targets would be all power plants in West Asia.” Bitcoin returned around $1,200 from its high within minutes.
Data from CoinGlass shows $415 million in liquidations in the four-hour window around the two stocks, with short liquidations accounting for $280 million and long positions accounting for $135 million. The nearly 2-to-1 ratio suggests the market was strongly positioned for escalation when Trump’s post arrived.
Of the total liquidations, bitcoin accounted for $140 million, ether accounted for $120 million, and Brent oil futures on Hyperliquide accounted for $64 million. Tokenized gold lost $20.9 million, while tokenized silver losses totaled $19.8 million.
Meanwhile, the oil liquidations were almost entirely one-sided.
The XYZ:BRENTOIL contract on Hyperliquid saw $64.4 million wiped out, with the vast majority hitting long positions that had positioned themselves on Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum to launch an attack on Iranian power plants rather than a delay. These traders were right about the direction of the war but wrong about the direction of the next Truth Social article.
Bitcoin spent the session in Asia gaining between $67,500 and $68,500, climbed $3,700 in an hour on post-Trump, then lost $1,200 under Iran’s denial.
As of Monday evening, he held $70,000, up 2.3% on the day, falling in the middle of a range he carved out in a few hours of headline-driven volatility.
The session reinforced what Binance spot futures data had signaled earlier this month. When derivatives dominate trading activity at 5x the spot volume, every headline is amplified by cascades of liquidations in both directions. The shorts are pressed on the de-escalation post, then the longs are grabbed when the counter title arrives.
The net movement ultimately turns out to be modest, but the damage to leveraged traders is not.
