Crypto longs lose $404M in 4 hours as bitcoin dips below $80K

Leveraged bulls took the brunt of Saturday's slide: $404.15 million of the $436.44 million in crypto positions liquidated in the four hours to 17:00 UTC were bets on higher prices, according to CoinGlass data compiled by The Block. Bitcoin briefly dropped under $80,000, extending the weekend sell-off we covered earlier in bitcoin's fall below $80K on US Middle East evacuations.

Two bursts of forced selling

Most of the damage came in two 15-minute windows:

• From 14:15 UTC: $208.21 million of longs were closed as BTC slipped from about $80,640 to $80,100.
• From 15:15 UTC: another $131.17 million of longs were liquidated.
• Low: bitcoin hit roughly $79,280 at about 15:20 UTC, then climbed back to around $80,138 by 17:00 UTC.

Long liquidations between 12:00 and 16:00 UTC reached $401.91 million, the largest four-hour total since the night of Oct. 14, when $505.57 million of longs were wiped out. Over 24 hours, liquidations came to $815.26 million — up 218% from the day before — and hit 201,012 traders. Open interest in crypto futures fell 2.2% to $140.10 billion.

Ether punched above its weight

Ether positions accounted for $136.72 million of the four-hour total against $158.45 million for bitcoin, despite ETH's market capitalisation being only about 18% of BTC's. Longs made up 94.2% of bitcoin liquidations and 92.7% of ether's. The single largest liquidation of the day was an $11.85 million ETH-USDT long on Binance, closed at $2,307.65.

By venue, Binance saw $226.07 million of liquidations over the four hours, 96% of them longs. On Hyperliquid, the onchain perpetual futures exchange, $70.47 million was liquidated — 99.8% longs.

ETF outflows and a high-profile exit

US spot bitcoin ETFs posted $137.94 million of net outflows on Friday, led by BlackRock's IBIT (−$110.34 million) and Fidelity's FBTC (−$31.78 million), after −$635.49 million on Thursday, per SoSoValue. They still ended the week about $304.73 million in the black thanks to $1.078 billion of inflows from Monday to Wednesday.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes wrote on X early Saturday that he had closed the directional book at his family office Maelstrom — "I dumped it all" — saying macro and geopolitical conditions looked "a bit dicey."

Why it matters

A liquidation happens when a leveraged trader's margin can no longer cover losses, so the exchange closes the position automatically. When many traders are positioned the same way, those forced sales can push prices lower and trigger the next wave. Our explainer on perpetual futures walks through how margin, liquidation prices and cascades work, and Oct. 15's near-$1 billion wipeout shows how quickly they can build.