Crypto Liquidations Reach $1.53 Billion Amid Binance Turmoil
Key Facts
Crypto position liquidations reached $1.53 billion over 24 hours through Friday morning in Asia, according to CoinGlass data cited by CoinDesk. The wave followed a security incident at Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, as markets were undergoing a sharp decline. Long positions, which bet on rising prices, accounted for 83.8% of total liquidations during that period. Most forced closures were concentrated in the final hours, reflecting the pressure on leveraged positions. Binance estimated the incident’s overall impact at about $6.3 billion and said it would cover the losses.
CoinDesk said the final 12 hours alone saw about $1.37 billion in liquidations, including $1.23 billion in long positions. Bitcoin position liquidations totaled about $499 million, compared with $358 million for Ether positions, according to CoinGlass data cited in the report. Binance accounted for $754.6 million in forced closures, or 49.2% of the market total over 24 hours. Of that amount, about $670.6 million came from long positions on the platform. CoinDesk explains that closing long positions typically generates sell orders, adding pressure to prices when they are already low.
In price action, Bitcoin fell to about $76,460 before recovering toward $78,500, while Ether traded near $2,240 after dropping below $2,200, according to CoinDesk. A separate report cited by MarketScreener and attributed to Reuters said Bitcoin hit a six-week low and was down 3% at $76,469.82, while Ether fell more than 3% to $2,185.83. EL7 data showed BTC/USD closing at $77,696.81 on October 30, compared with a close of $77,991.89 the previous day. The Reuters report noted that the average spot Bitcoin bid-ask spread widened to five times its usual level earlier Friday morning, and to 2.5 times the usual level for Ether, before narrowing slightly. Coinbase shares fell 4.8%, and Strategy shares about 6%, in extended U.S. trading on October 29, according to the same report.
Binance said the incident’s estimated impact was about $6.3 billion and that it had worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with about $3 billion frozen on-chain by the time of its statement. TRM Labs said an attacker moved about $6.36 billion from Binance wallets across ten blockchain networks on October 29. TRM attributed the attack with high confidence to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group. These figures describe Binance’s estimate of the impact and TRM’s monitoring of transfers, while the CoinGlass figure measures the value of positions liquidated in the market. Binance said it had found no evidence that wallet private keys had been leaked, and that its initial investigation indicated that a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop may have enabled the attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions.
Binance temporarily suspended withdrawals to complete security checks, while saying deposits were unaffected and that it would cover all losses, according to AP. The platform expected withdrawals to resume within the next day or two and said it would publish an updated proof of reserves after processing was complete. It announced that it would share a detailed technical report after the investigation was complete and the facts had been verified. Comparing the losses with previous incidents in the sector, AP said the February 2025 hack of Bybit caused losses of $1.5 billion. An analyst at Standard Chartered said market stability may require the assets to be frozen and more details about the hack to emerge, adding: "We will not find a new market floor until the assets are unfrozen and more details about the hack emerge."