Shorts rekt as BTC spike to $122k triggers $333M in liquidations
The crypto derivatives market saw $333.56 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours, with shorts bearing the brunt of the losses, with $212.59 million wiped versus $120.97 million in longs. That 1.76 short-to-long ratio followed Bitcoin’s 2% gain in a day, as it touched $122,000 after struggling to break through significant resistance at $118,000 for days.
The liquidation skew tells us that shorts increasingly leaned into weakness and got run over by a persistent bid as Bitcoin spiked above $120,000.
The composition by asset shows where the leverage sat. Unsurprisingly, Bitcoin accounted for $115 million of the total and Ethereum for $93.22 million, roughly 62% combined. This is consistent with positioning concentrated on the two largest assets, while the long tail of alts contributed smaller tickets that add up but don’t drive the day’s profile.
Binance saw $120.58 million in liquidations and Bybit $103.63 million, about 67% of the 24-hour tally. OKX followed with $53.82 million, Gate with $33.11 million, and HTX with $27.74 million. The tilt toward short liquidations held across major venues: Binance showed 52.94% of value liquidated on the short side, Bybit 61.06%, OKX 53.28%, Gate 70.26%, and HTX 69.55%. Retail-heavy platforms, in particular, showed a sharper, shorter skew, matching the pattern you’d expect during a grind-up that hunts crowded entries rather than flash-crashing through thin bids.
The day’s largest liquidation was a $9.14 million BTC-USDT-SWAP order on OKX. Single tickets of that size aren’t market-moving in isolation at current liquidity, but they illustrate how quickly convexity bites once price lifts through obvious short entry clusters and liquidation bands.
If BTC holds above $121,000, the short liquidation supply should cool unless price stretches into fresh pockets higher. A swift retrace would flip risk toward over-eager longs, but today’s ledger shows positioning pain sat with bears.
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