Chip-stock perps see $52M liquidated in 10 minutes
About $51.6M of leveraged chip-stock bets were force-closed on crypto exchanges late Saturday while Wall Street was shut. SOXL led; selling began on Binance.
CryptoGroup Newsroom · · 3 min read
Traders lost about $52 million on chip stocks on Saturday night — even though Wall Street was closed. The losses came from perpetual futures on crypto exchanges that track US shares around the clock, and roughly $51.6 million of positions were force-closed in just ten minutes, CoinDesk reported, citing CoinGlass data.
What happened
Between 21:22 and 21:32 UTC on 17 October, leveraged bets tied to semiconductor stocks and chip funds were wiped out as prices slid. About $38 million of the total came from traders betting on higher prices.
- SOXL, a fund designed to deliver three times the daily move of a chip index, led with about $12.7 million liquidated.
- SanDisk and SK Hynix contracts followed at about $10.8 million each.
- Separate CoinGlass tallies relayed by Crypto Briefing put the inverse fund SOXS at about $9.1 million and Micron at about $4.4 million.
Ten minutes on Saturday night (UTC)
21:21:59
First big sell orders on Binance
A review of the trades by Tread.fi CEO David Jeong places the first large SanDisk and Micron sell orders on Binance.
Under 1 second later
Selling spreads to Hyperliquid
Orders hit Trade XYZ's stock contracts on Hyperliquid; about 10 addresses opened short bets on six chip-linked contracts within 1.8 seconds.
First minute
Binance carries most of the volume
Binance handled about $21.9M of SanDisk trading versus $3.1M on Trade XYZ.
21:22–21:32
Liquidation cascade
Roughly $51.6M of positions are force-closed, according to CoinGlass.
Why a closed market can still crash
A perpetual future has no expiry and is usually traded with leverage. When losses eat through a trader's deposit, the exchange closes the position automatically, and that forced selling can push the price lower for the next trader in line. With the stock market shut, there was no real share price for these contracts to anchor to; Trade XYZ's rules let on-platform trading set its own reference prices until outside quotes resume. Memory-chip shares were already under pressure after a rough week in which investors weighed new competition from Chinese chipmaker CXMT.
Stacking leverage on a fund that is already 3x leveraged magnifies every move, and thin weekend liquidity makes such cascades more likely. For background on how on-chain versions of shares work, see our explainer on tokenized stocks; Hyperliquid's growing menu of traditional-market products includes S&P 500 options on Hypercall. Our comparison of centralized and decentralized exchanges explains the trade-offs between venues like Binance and Hyperliquid.
What's next
US stock markets reopen on Monday, and the first real quotes will show how far Saturday's contract prices drifted from where the shares actually trade.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile; do your own research. Read our disclaimer
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