A sudden crypto sell-off liquidated roughly $500 million in leveraged long positions within an hour, pushing 24-hour liquidations toward $1.82 billion. Bitcoin's own pullback from $79,500 to $77,000 added a separate $547 million wave, while total futures open interest shed about $3 billion in the broader unwind.
A sudden crypto sell-off liquidated leveraged positions across the board within the span of an hour. Bitcoin fell 2.5%, Ethereum dropped 5%, Solana slid 11.5% and XRP plunged 37%. Roughly $500 million in long positions were force-closed in that hour, pushing total 24-hour liquidations toward $1.82 billion. Most of the closures hit leveraged long positions on major exchanges, including Binance. Traders remained split on the cause: some pointed to market manipulation, while others called it a broader deleveraging event.
Bitcoin's retrace to $77,000 triggers a separate $547 million wave
Bitcoin's own pullback added to the damage. The token had rallied from lows near $64,000 to $65,000 earlier in August to briefly touch $79,500, a climb that squeezed short sellers and liquidated between $1 billion and $3.5 billion in short positions across various 24-hour windows, according to CryptoBriefing. Bitcoin then slid from $79,500 to $77,000, a pullback that wiped out $547 million in leveraged positions, landing squarely on the most leveraged corner of the market. The rally itself had been fueled partly by the US Treasury's expansion of its long-term bond buyback operations, roughly doubling from $2 billion to over $4 billion, alongside regulatory signals from the Trump administration that favored crypto exchange compliance.
Open interest data shows the scale of the unwind
Separately, CryptoBriefing reported that total crypto futures open interest fell by roughly $3 billion in a rapid slide across major coins, triggering $308 million in forced liquidations as exchanges automatically closed positions once margin thresholds were breached. At the time, total open interest sat between $48 billion and $51 billion, with Bitcoin futures alone accounting for around $24 billion of that exposure — the single largest source of leveraged risk in the market.
Derivatives tracker Coinglass has logged similar cascades throughout 2026, with liquidation totals ranging from hundreds of millions of dollars to more than $2 billion in the most severe episodes, concentrated mostly in Bitcoin and Ethereum markets.
Sources: Coinpedia Fintech News, Crypto Briefing
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