Bitcoin Recovers as Shorts Take 77% of $29.2M Liquidation Flush

Shorts Take 77% of Bitcoin Flush

Bitcoin (BTC) steadied near $79,000 on Monday after a 24-hour liquidation wave cleared, and the cleanup ran against the bears: short positions took 77.26% of the $29.16 million forced out of Bitcoin perpetuals in the window to Monday 04:00 UTC, derivatives data shows. Ethereum followed the same pattern, with shorts accounting for 59.76% of its $24.63 million in liquidations. Solana ran the other way, its long positions absorbing 87.62% of a much smaller $5.62 million. Added up, the three coins shed $59.41 million to forced closures in a single day. A liquidation closes a leveraged position automatically once margin runs out; unlike ordinary order types in crypto trading, the exit is triggered by the venue, not chosen by the trader. Shorts are closed out when price rises far enough that posted margin no longer covers the loss, and the venue then buys back at market, adding upward pressure while the move is already running against them. The direction of the split therefore matters more than its size: when short liquidations dominate while prices climb, the session was a squeeze, leverage held against the prevailing move getting cleared first. Bitcoin (BTC) carried the largest single tally, its $29.16 million sitting ahead of Ethereum's $24.63 million, with Solana's $5.62 million a fraction of either. COINOTAG's live reading, taken seconds before publication, puts Bitcoin at $78,720, up 1.2% over 24 hours and fractionally above its level when the reporting window shut, with Ethereum at $2,311, up 1.9%. The tape, in short, did not fold once the flush ended. It recovered, and that recovery is what pushed the crowded short book past its margin thresholds.

Positive Funding, Rising Won Bids

The split leaves one mechanism to explain, and the funding rate supplies it. The benchmark BTC perpetual carried an eight-hour funding rate of 0.0066%, positive, meaning longs pay shorts to keep the contract tracking spot. A positive sign during a stretch that liquidated shorts is the signature of demand that never broke: traders kept paying for long exposure even as bearish positions were closed for them. The level itself is unremarkable at that magnitude; its sign, not its size, is the informative part, and it says the leverage behind the recovery has not unwound. The spot side tells the same story. Korean won quotes on Upbit rose across all three assets against the prior day, with Bitcoin (BTC) up 1.00% to 105,895,000 won, Ethereum up 2.13% to 3,110,000 won and Solana up 1.82% to 128,800 won. Nothing in the won market suggests holders abandoned a HODL posture to chase the move or to exit it; the gains printed across the board on bids that stayed in place. The one number that breaks the pattern is Solana's liquidation mix. Its 87.62% long share, against a 1.82% gain in won terms, indicates leveraged buyers on SOL were caught even in a rising session, the mirror image of the BTC and ETH books. In a quiet tape that detail is a footnote. If the market turns, crowded longs on the smallest of the three coins would be the first margin consumed.

Longs Still Paying After the Squeeze

Read together, the print is a squeeze with an unresolved tail. Shorts financed Bitcoin's and Ethereum's gains, yet longs are still paying for exposure, so positioning did not reset to neutral; the leverage simply changed sides of risk. The account-level long/short ratio, where tracked, describes how traders are positioned, never how the liquidations split, and the two figures should not be read as one. If the recovery extends, fresh FOMO bidding would show up first in funding climbing further above zero, and in the next Crypto Fear and Greed Index reading. Our desk's live levels at publication, Bitcoin at $78,720 and Ethereum at $2,311, stand as the position after the flush.