Steep price pullbacks wipe $90M in longs

Amid an aggressive drawdown on Thursday, leverage traders were among the hardest hit

article-image

Hi my name is Jacco/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

As prices dipped lower across the sector on Thursday, derivatives traders were among the hardest-hit with $90 million in long positions wiped out in just two hours. 

According to data from Coinglass, between 10:00 am and 12:00 pm ET, a sector-wide price plunge led by bitcoin (BTC) dropping from $28,393 to $27,920 kicked off a series of liquidations across centralized exchanges. 

The two-hour washout is just a fraction of the $200 million lost over the last 24 hours — the highest total since June 9, when $348 million in longs were liquidated.

Leading the liquidations for the day are OKX, which liquidated $69.2 million in longs, followed by Binance, which wiped $47.3 million. 

A lack of volatility in crypto large-cap assets such as bitcoin and ether (ETH) means that the liquidation stats could have been even worse. Bitcoin has been trading in a $1,500 range between $30,000 and $28,500 for the better part of a month, and a recent Kaiko report found that both BTC and ETH have recently been less volatile than oil. Traditionally, derivatives traders prefer assets with high volatility. 

On-chain leverage positions may be the next area of focus if prices continue to drop. Because of DeFi protocols’ liquidation procedures, unwinding on-chain derivatives and leverage positions can lead to liquidation cascades and protocols programmatically sell user collateral. 

According to DeFiLlama, $162.3 million is at risk of liquidation within a 20% price drop on the Ethereum chain alone, and $1.6 billion at risk total. 

Ether is down 4.7% on the day to $1,736.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Pipe Network is a decentralized content delivery network (dCDN) that replaces the sparse, capital intensive data center footprint of traditional CDNs with a permissionless mesh of independent node operators. By orchestrating under-utilized resources that already exist at the edge, rather than purchasing or leasing thousands of servers, Pipe slashes capital intensity while letting supply expand autonomously in the places where bandwidth is scarcest and most expensive.

article-image

ETH’s “breakout marks a significant structural shift and clears the path towards…$4,000,” Kraken’s OTC desk noted

article-image

Fiscal dominance isn’t about interest rates and it isn’t about Trump, either

article-image

Firestarter Storage brings decentralized storage and delivery to Solana

article-image

After lengthy closing arguments on Wednesday, the case is now in the hands of 12 jurors

article-image

Analysts cite weak trading volume and regulatory progress as factors

article-image

Builders weigh in on Ethereum’s first decade and the decisions that will define its next one