The short version
- Crypto liquidations reached $1.02 billion in 24 hours, $915 million of it longs, and $719 million hit in one 15-minute window after 21:45 UTC on Sunday.
- ETH wicked from $2,211 to $2,060 on Binance in four minutes, its lowest since August 19, and took $449 million of liquidations, 1.6 times Bitcoin’s.
- Next: ETH sits just under its 200-day moving average at $2,155; a daily close back above it would put the wick behind it, while $2,060 is the low the remaining longs defend.
$719 million in 15 minutes. That is how much leverage CoinGlass counted wiped out between 21:45 and 22:00 UTC on Sunday, and $693 million of it was traders betting on higher prices.
Crypto liquidations over 24 hours came to $1.02 billion across 150,219 traders, with $915 million from longs. Ethereum took the worst of it. The night in three steps:
- 20:00 to 20:45 UTC: Nvidia’s board said it was opening an independent investigation after reports that CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. Nvidia’s perpetual on Hyperliquid, which trades when Wall Street is shut, fell from $187.50 to $180.15.
- 21:51 to 21:55 UTC: ETH dropped from $2,211 to $2,060 on Binance and Bitcoin from $75,317 to $73,510, both the lowest prices since August.
- By 22:00 UTC: the bounce had started. ETH was back at $2,128 and BTC at $74,264.
So the crash lasted four minutes, and most of it was forced selling. Why did ETH take so much more damage than Bitcoin, and is the leverage cleared out now?
Not everyone was forced out. A few hours later Lookonchain spotted wallets buying the ETH dip with borrowed money:
Whales are buying the $ETH dip as the market crashes!
Wallet 0xFD10 borrowed 22M $USDT from Aave, then spent 21.55M $USDT to buy 10,000 $ETH at $2,155.
Wallet 0x4AB7 withdrew another 3,500 $ETH ($7.53M) from #Binance 10 minutes ago, bringing its total withdrawals over the past
Crypto Liquidations Today: Where the $1 Billion Came From
Mostly from one exchange and one coin. CoinGlass puts Binance at 49.5% of the 24-hour total, and in the 21:45 UTC window alone Binance liquidated $419.5 million of longs. Bybit added $136.6 million and Hyperliquid $38.3 million.
A liquidation is the exchange closing a leveraged trade because the margin behind it has run out. For a long, that means a market sell. Each forced sale pushes the price toward the next trader’s liquidation price, and that chain is a liquidation cascade.
The biggest single order shows it. At 21:55 UTC Binance closed a $48.16 million ETH long at $2,095.50, the largest liquidation of the day. That was the minute ETH printed its low, on $64.6 million of Binance spot volume.
The biggest single loser traded on Hyperliquid: one whale had $125.4 million of ETH and BTC longs force-closed in 13 seconds at 21:55 UTC, a story we cover separately today.
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Why Did Ethereum Fall Harder Than Bitcoin?
Because more leverage sat on it. From the 21:30 UTC open to the low, ETH fell 7.4% and Bitcoin 2.9%, yet ETH liquidations came to 1.6 times Bitcoin’s, on a coin worth about a sixth as much.
Open interest, the value of futures positions still open, tells the same story. On OKX, ETH open interest dropped from $1.94 billion at 21:00 UTC to $1.80 billion two hours later, about 7%. Bitcoin’s fell from $3.83 billion to $3.73 billion, under 3%.
Worth noting what did not happen at 21:55 UTC: there was no new headline. Nvidia’s perpetual had been falling since 20:00 UTC, and Iran’s foreign minister had said earlier on Sunday that talks with Washington had made no progress since the US midterms. Those set the mood. The crash itself came from a thin Sunday order book meeting a market full of leveraged longs.
TRAIL MAP: Funding Rates and Open Interest: Reading the Leverage in the Market
SIDE TRAIL: Futures and Leverage Explained: Perps, Margin and How Liquidation Really Works
Ethereum Price: Can ETH Get Back Above the 200-Day MA?
Not yet. The Ethereum price sits at $2,143 at the time of writing, down 4.2% in 24 hours and just under its 200-day moving average (MA) at $2,155, the average close of the last 200 days. The wick to $2,060 was the lowest price since August 19.
Funding on OKX’s ETH perpetual flipped too. Longs paid 0.0061% per eight hours at Sunday’s 00:00 UTC settlement; at Monday’s, shorts paid 0.0109%. In other words, the crowd went from leaning long to leaning short in one night, which leaves fuel for a squeeze if ETH turns up.
Bitcoin held up better. Its wick stopped above the 200-day MA at $73,208, and BTC trades back above $75,000. The weekly candle still closed at $74,851, a fifth red week in a row and under the 50-week MA near $75,535.
For ETH the levels are close together: $2,155 above, the 200-day MA it lost on Sunday, then $2,450, the November 4 high. Below sits $2,060, the low of the wick. A daily close back above $2,155 would make Sunday a flush and nothing more; losing $2,060 would mean the longs were right to be scared.
TANG has been trading crypto since 2017. The focus is technicals, DeFi and onchain data. On the chart, that means high-timeframe support, moving averages and momentum divergences. Onchain, it means regular checkups on where the data puts the cycle. TANG once ran CryptoJungle, a free community for researching and trading together, and brings that same spirit to Base Camp as one of its co-founders.
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