Nearly $1.19 billion in crypto leverage was wiped out over 24 hours this week, and ether traders took a disproportionate share of the damage, according to CoinDesk reporting on liquidation data.
Roughly $356 million in ether positions were closed by force, more than Bitcoin’s $298 million, even though ETH has a far smaller market value. Adjusted for the size of each asset, the liquidation rate for ether was about six times Bitcoin’s, a sign of how crowded bullish positioning had become on the token.
More than $1 billion of the total came from long positions, traders who had borrowed to bet on prices rising. Over 180,000 traders saw bets closed automatically, according to CoinGlass data cited by TradingKey. Bitcoin fell for a fourth straight session during the flush, dropping as low as $80,336 before finding support near $82,000 to $82,500.
| Asset | 24h liquidations | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Total crypto | $1.19 billion | Over $1 billion from long positions |
| Ether | $356 million | About six times Bitcoin’s rate relative to market cap |
| Bitcoin | $298 million | Price briefly dipped below $81,000 intraday |
| Traders closed | 180,000-plus | Mostly longs across major exchanges |
Why ether got hit harder
The skewed ether liquidation count reflects positioning, not fundamentals. ETH funding rates had run persistently positive in the weeks before the drop, pushing traders to stack longs in anticipation of a breakout. When prices dipped instead, those positions hit their liquidation thresholds first and in greater concentration relative to the asset’s size.
Crowded leverage in one direction also tends to accelerate a fall. Forced selling feeds back into price, which pushes more positions below water, a chain that only stops when the excess leverage has been flushed out. That is roughly what happened: prices fell, exchanges closed positions, the selling added to downward pressure, and more positions hit their limits in sequence until the cascade ran out of fuel.
Ether still underpins the largest decentralized finance applications and staking markets. Its longer-term narrative includes ongoing scaling work under the Glamsterdam upgrade testing cycle. None of that cancels the immediate effect of crowded leverage getting cleared out in one session, but it matters for how the asset behaves after the flush ends.
The six-times figure needs careful reading. It compares liquidations relative to each asset’s market capitalization, not the total dollar damage. Ether’s dollar losses were only modestly higher than Bitcoin’s. The point is that ether carried more leverage per dollar of market value, which made it mechanically more fragile when the market turned.
What pushed the market down
TradingKey pointed to rising Treasury yields and a stronger dollar, plus four straight days of spot ETF outflows. The pressure is not small: US spot bitcoin and ether ETFs have shed roughly $986 million in October, and ether funds just logged an eighth consecutive day of withdrawals. Total crypto market value dipped below $2.8 trillion intraday, a one-month low, before recovering. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index eased from 64 to 59 over the sessions, still in greed territory but off last week’s reading of 72, which suggests sentiment has cooled without turning fearful.
The macro picture has not helped. The US 10-year Treasury yield had reached about 5.35% this week, its highest since 2002, before easing after Thursday’s $22 billion 30-year auction cleared with strong indirect demand at 72.3% of bids. Higher yields make non-yielding assets like crypto less attractive against bonds, and the Fed has signaled further tightening may still be needed to contain inflation fed partly by high energy prices.
Geopolitics also weighs on risk appetite. Brent crude above $100 a barrel keeps inflation expectations elevated, and rate expectations move crypto more than most asset classes. Gold, meanwhile, has been climbing to near $4,200 an ounce, which tells you where defensive money is going while risk assets wobble.
Where Bitcoin sits now
Bitcoin trades around $82,000 to $82,500, roughly 35% below its record of $126,198 from October 2025. Glassnode data cited by CryptoSlate shows a wall of sell orders between $86,500 and $86,750, leaving Bitcoin boxed between that resistance and the $80,000 support it just defended. TradingKey names $75,000 as the next line if $80,000 gives way, and traders will be watching whether the level holds through the weekend when liquidity is thinner.
For scale, this week’s flush is still modest by recent standards. On October 11, 2025, a single day erased $19.16 billion in leveraged positions, the largest liquidation event on record. The difference this time is that the losses built up over four sessions rather than in hours, which gave markets time to absorb them without a full panic.
For ether, the test is whether spot buyers return now that the leverage pressure has eased. Liquidation cascades typically exhaust once the crowded side is cleared. If demand comes back, the size of the flush becomes the reason the rebound holds. If it does not, the same crowding can rebuild quickly, since the traders who took the losses are often the ones most eager to get back in at lower prices.
One bright spot
The most constructive crypto item this week came from infrastructure, not price. Chainlink launched CCIP Vault Adapters on October 8, a tool that lets a vault on one blockchain accept deposits from more than 80 other chains. Aave, Lombard and Venus are named among the early adopters. LINK fell less than most large caps during the flush, trading near $12.88.
The contrast is worth noticing. While leveraged traders got cleared out in a single session, the underlying build-out of cross-chain rails continued on schedule. Flushes like this week’s tend to reveal which assets had real usage under the leverage and which were only price action.