Headline: Bullish bets crushed — roughly $1.8B liquidated as BTC, ETH, SOL and DOGE tumble
Crypto traders woke up to one of the market’s roughest mornings: around $1.84 billion of leveraged positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours as Bitcoin slid from roughly $69,482 to below $66,000 and Ether fell under $1,900 — the biggest single-day wipeout since Feb. 5, according to CoinGlass.
What happened
- The cascade was overwhelmingly a long-book wipeout: longs accounted for about $1.66 billion of the total liquidations, while shorts absorbed roughly $180 million. (A liquidation occurs when an exchange force-closes a leveraged trade after losses exceed the posted collateral.)
- Bitcoin longs took the largest hit — approximately $883.66 million. Ether longs lost about $475.73 million and Solana longs around $91.18 million. The remainder (roughly $390 million) was spread across HYPE, DOGE, SUI, BNB, NEAR, AAVE, LINK and other top-30 assets.
- The single largest liquidation was a $59.67 million BTC-USDT long on HTX.
Exchanges and flows
- Binance accounted for roughly $748 million of the liquidations (≈41% of the cascade), with 89% of those positions being long. Hyperliquid handled about $314 million (94% longs), and Bybit logged $247 million (93% longs).
- Aggregate taker volume over the period showed $65.39 billion in sells versus $60.16 billion in buys — sellers were the marginal actors.
Open interest and positioning: why this matters
- Paradoxically, Bitcoin open interest (the value of unsettled leveraged futures) rose during the sell-off — from ~759,000 BTC to ~788,600 BTC. Rising OI while price falls typically signals that new shorts are being opened rather than longs simply being squeezed out, meaning fresh bearish bets may be piling on top of the long flush.
- Retail traders remain stubbornly long on major venues: Binance (long/short ratio 2.22), OKX (2.01) and Bybit (1.58). By contrast, whale accounts on OKX have flipped extremely bearish, with a long/short ratio of 0.54, a signal CoinGlass flags as “extremely bearish.”
Market outlook
- The mix of rising OI, continued retail long exposure, and whales turning short suggests the market has not yet found a stable clearing level. Technically and psychologically, a break below $65,000 would put $60,000 squarely back in play. If BTC holds above that threshold, a relief bounce is possible — but the positioning data implies a bounce may be less likely than further downside in the near term.
Bottom line: This liquidation event was a near-pure flush of long leverage that exposed heavy retail exposure and growing short interest from big players. Traders should watch OI, whale positioning and $65K as the next key levels.
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