Nearly a billion dollars in crypto positions were forcibly closed in a single day. According to CoinGlass data, $967 million in derivatives liquidations hit the market over the past 24 hours, with the overwhelming majority coming from traders who bet prices would go up.
Long positions accounted for roughly $849 million of that total, or about 88%. The remaining liquidations came from short sellers.
Ethereum takes the biggest hit
In a somewhat surprising twist, Ethereum led the liquidation charts with $309 million in forced closures. Bitcoin came in second at approximately $246 million. That means ETH traders absorbed more pain than BTC traders despite Bitcoin being the asset that typically dominates these events.
Bitcoin was trading around $109,200 at the time, representing a decline of more than 6% over the week. That drop followed a fall to $112,000 earlier in the same week, meaning this was actually the second major long squeeze in just a few days.
The deleveraging thesis
Not everyone sees a near-billion-dollar liquidation event as purely bad news. On-chain analytics provider Glassnode suggested that this kind of deleveraging can actually reset market positioning and reduce the immediate risk of further cascading declines.
What this means for investors
What makes this event worth watching is the concentration in long positions. When 88% of liquidations come from one side of the trade, it reveals just how crowded the bullish consensus had become.
The broader availability of leverage across crypto exchanges, many of which offer 50x, 100x, or even higher multiples, makes these liquidation cascades a structural feature of the market rather than a bug.
The key metric to watch now is whether open interest, the total value of outstanding derivatives contracts, rebuilds quickly or stays suppressed. A rapid rebuild would suggest traders are jumping back in with leverage, setting up conditions for another squeeze. A slower recovery would align with Glassnode’s thesis that the deleveraging has created a healthier market structure.