Liquidation Events
Every cycle produces days when leverage unwinds all at once. The historical cascades that defined crypto risk — and the largest forced closures happening this week.
Historic Liquidation Cascades
The deleveraging events that shaped crypto market structure
2020-03-12 — BTC fell ~50% in 24 hours as global markets seized. Over $1B of longs were liquidated, and BitMEX — then the dominant perp venue — went offline mid-cascade, which many credit with stopping the spiral.
2021-04-18 — A weekend flash crash liquidated roughly $10B of positions in a day — at the time the largest single-day wipeout — after open interest hit record highs during the first 2021 rally.
2021-05-19 — China's mining ban headlines plus over-leveraged longs produced one of the deepest cascades ever: BTC dropped ~30% intraday and total liquidations for the day were estimated near $8B.
2022-11-08 — The insolvency of a top-3 exchange unwound the market over days rather than hours: billions liquidated across venues as BTC broke $16K, and FTX's own positions were force-closed in bankruptcy.
2024-08-05 — A violent unwind of the yen carry trade hit global risk assets; crypto saw over $1B liquidated in 24h as BTC gapped from $61K to $49K in a weekend-to-Monday move.
2025-10-10 — A tariff-headline shock triggered the largest notional liquidation day in crypto history — estimates ran to $19B across venues in 24 hours — cascading through record-high open interest.
Liquidation totals for historic events are estimates aggregated from exchange reports and may undercount, since several venues cap or sample the liquidation data they publish.
Largest Liquidations — Last 7 Days
Live from major exchanges · all times UTC
| # | Exchange | Coin | Side | Value | Time (UTC) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LONG | $11.00M | Oct 29 20:42 UTC | ||
| 2 | LONG | $9.75M | Oct 29 20:41 UTC | ||
| 3 | LONG | $9.15M | Oct 30 00:18 UTC | ||
| 4 | LONG | $8.24M | Oct 29 20:41 UTC | ||
| 5 | SHORT | $7.87M | Oct 29 21:18 UTC | ||
| 6 | LONG | $7.69M | Oct 29 20:47 UTC | ||
| 7 | LONG | $7.65M | Oct 29 20:47 UTC | ||
| 8 | SHORT | $7.62M | Oct 30 05:03 UTC | ||
| 9 | LONG | $7.40M | Oct 29 23:45 UTC | ||
| 10 | LONG | $7.21M | Oct 29 20:42 UTC | ||
| 11 | LONG | $7.06M | Oct 30 09:24 UTC | ||
| 12 | LONG | $6.88M | Oct 29 20:42 UTC | ||
| 13 | LONG | $6.35M | Oct 30 00:18 UTC | ||
| 14 | LONG | $6.18M | Oct 29 23:46 UTC | ||
| 15 | SHORT | $6.12M | Oct 30 05:32 UTC | ||
| 16 | LONG | $6.07M | Oct 30 01:30 UTC | ||
| 17 | LONG | $5.82M | Oct 29 20:34 UTC | ||
| 18 | LONG | $5.53M | Oct 29 20:41 UTC | ||
| 19 | LONG | $5.39M | Oct 30 09:47 UTC | ||
| 20 | LONG | $5.14M | Oct 29 20:41 UTC | ||
| 21 | LONG | $5.14M | Oct 29 20:06 UTC | ||
| 22 | LONG | $5.08M | Oct 29 20:41 UTC | ||
| 23 | LONG | $4.93M | Oct 30 00:22 UTC | ||
| 24 | LONG | $4.79M | Oct 29 20:41 UTC | ||
| 25 | LONG | $4.77M | Oct 29 20:06 UTC |
Live aggregates are on liquidations, the full order feed on liquidation orders, and forward-looking cluster maps on liquidation levels.
Methodology & Sources
- Sources
- Aggregated exchange derivatives APIs (liquidation order streams) plus curated historical event research
- Coverage
- Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Gate, Hyperliquid and further major derivatives venues; historic events cover 2020–2025 market-wide cascades
- Formulas
- The live table ranks individual forced-closure orders from the last 7 days by USD value; the 24h stat sums long and short liquidation value market-wide. Historic event totals are estimates aggregated from exchange reports at the time and may undercount.
- Update frequency
- Live sections refresh roughly every 5 minutes; the historic event list is editorial and updated as major events occur.
- Units & timezone
- All monetary values are USD. Timestamps and daily buckets use UTC. 24h windows are rolling unless stated otherwise.
- Anomaly handling
- Exchanges that stop reporting are dropped from aggregates rather than carried forward; obvious outliers (bad ticks, decimal errors) are filtered before aggregation.