Crypto Liquidations Reach $1.53 Billion as Long Bets Retreat
Key Facts
Crypto liquidations reached $1.53 billion in the 24 hours through Friday morning in Asia, with long positions, which bet on rising prices, accounting for 83.8% of the total, according to CoinDesk, citing CoinGlass data. The wave followed declines in major cryptocurrencies and coincided with a security incident at Binance, though CoinDesk did not establish that the incident alone caused the liquidations. The large share of long positions reflects the scale of bullish bets forcibly closed during the period. But the liquidation mix shifted over shorter windows, with the latest price moves triggering closures of short positions.
Liquidations among major cryptocurrencies were concentrated in Bitcoin and Ether, at about $499 million and $358 million, respectively, over 24 hours, according to CoinDesk, citing CoinGlass. Solana recorded $82.6 million in liquidations, compared with $38.1 million for XRP and $18.6 million for Dogecoin. By trading platform, Binance recorded $754.6 million in liquidations, equal to 49.2% of the market total, of which about $670.6 million came from long positions. Hyperliquid followed with $251.4 million in liquidations, then Bybit with about $186.5 million. The distribution shows that most of the recorded closures were concentrated on Binance, alongside the dominance of long positions across the market.
While long liquidations dominated the 24-hour total, closures in the latest shorter periods shifted toward short positions. They totaled $57.3 million of the $85 million liquidated in the latest four hours, according to CoinDesk, citing CoinGlass. In the latest hour, short positions accounted for $20.6 million of a total $21.6 million, or about 95%. This coincided with a partial rebound in cryptocurrency prices after the decline, a move that also inflicted losses on traders who had bet on further declines. The figures show how the direction of pressure differed between the full-day window and the latest hour.
Bitcoin fell to an overnight low of $76,400 on October 30 before recovering part of its losses, while Ether temporarily declined to $2,170 and then rebounded to about $2,220, according to CoinDesk. The Associated Press said Bitcoin fell 3.2% on the evening of Thursday, October 29, to below $79,000. A Reuters report via Investing.com estimated that Bitcoin hit a six-week low of $76,469.82 and Ether fell more than 3% to $2,185.83. These levels put the two cryptocurrencies’ moves in the context of the selloff that accompanied derivatives liquidations, with the reports capturing prices at different times. The coincidence alone did not establish that the Binance incident was the sole cause of the move.
TRM Labs estimated that an attacker moved about $6.36 billion from Binance wallets across 10 blockchain networks on October 29, with most of the activity taking place over about 20 minutes starting at 20:05 UTC. The company attributed the attack with high confidence to the TraderTraitor group. In a separate preliminary assessment, Binance said the incident may have involved a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which was used to access a service container and send unauthorized withdrawal transactions. The platform added that it found no evidence of private wallet keys being leaked. Binance said deposits were unaffected, while withdrawals were temporarily suspended during security checks.
Binance said it had allocated more than $6.34 billion to cover the stolen funds through the SAFU fund and company funds, including $5 billion held in the affected assets themselves. It added that about $3 billion had been frozen on-chain as of its October 30 update. The company aimed to begin resuming withdrawal service within about 34 hours of that update, while deposits and unaffected services continued. It also said it expected to publish additional technical findings within about 48 hours after verification. Binance announced plans to conduct an initial proof-of-reserves snapshot within 12 hours and make the results available by Monday, November 2, 2026, alongside a detailed technical report after the investigation was complete and the facts had been verified.
Market volatility extended to options trading, where five of the six highest-volume Bitcoin options were puts, all with strike prices below the current price, according to a CoinDesk report on October 30. These positions reflect defensive positioning in the options market during the downturn. An analyst at Standard Chartered said negative price pressure could persist until details of the incident become clear and the frozen assets are released. An analyst at HashKey said the withdrawal suspension could affect market makers’ ability to move capital between platforms. In the wider industry, the Associated Press said the Bybit hack in February 2025 caused a loss of $1.5 billion and described the Binance incident as the largest recorded cryptocurrency theft by dollar value.