Bitcoin Shorts Took 82% of $73.14M in 24-Hour Liquidation Flush

Shorts Outnumbered Longs 3.3 to 1

Short positions absorbed the overwhelming share of the damage in crypto derivatives over the past 24 hours. Aggregated liquidation data shows $133.67 million in leveraged positions were closed by force in the window ending 11:00 UTC on Monday, October 5, and shorts accounted for 76.68% of that figure, roughly 3.3 times the long-side total. The split points to a squeeze rather than a sell-off: rising prices, not falling ones, forced the exits. Squeezes of this kind tend to compress quickly, but the one-sided mix is the fact that matters for how the rest of the table reads.

Bitcoin (BTC) price action explains why. The largest asset by market cap held near $86,100 at the time of writing, up about 1.0% on the day, and had already gained 0.95% by the time the snapshot was compiled at 11:00 UTC. Ethereum (ETH) traced the same path, changing hands around $2,717 with a 0.54% gain across the window and holding that level in our live monitoring since.

Bitcoin (BTC) also carried the heaviest single-asset total. Of the $133.67 million recorded across the top 20 tracked assets, Bitcoin took $73.14 million, and 82% of that, about $60.03 million, came from short positions. Ethereum contributed $30.80 million, with shorts at 75%. In absolute terms the split reads $31.17 million in long liquidations against $102.50 million in shorts.

The mechanics make the direction unambiguous. A leveraged position is closed when its margin can no longer cover the loss on the trade. When shorts dominate the total while prices grind higher, forced buy-to-cover orders pour into the order book, and those purchases can lift prices further, extending the very move that pushed the positions under. At these levels the flush reads as forced exits, not the opening move of a wider unwind.

The dispersion down the table is as telling as the totals at the top. Solana (SOL) recorded $5.02 million in liquidations, 53% of it short, during a 0.51% dip in its price across the window. Zcash (ZEC) broke the pattern: 53% of its $4.41 million total came from longs, matching its 1.40% decline over the same 24 hours. Cardano (ADA) carried the most lopsided mix, with 89% of its $2.88 million in short liquidations. XRP posted $2.70 million with shorts at 58% while gaining 1.22% on the day, and PUMP at $2.62 million (76% short) and SUI at $2.56 million (73% short) closed out the largest names on the list.

No asset outside Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum reached $6 million in liquidations, and everything below Solana stayed under $5 million. The eight named assets together account for about $124.13 million, nearly 93% of the recorded total, so the list above captures almost everything the window produced. Among the broader majors, Hyperliquid (HYPE) gained 2.56% over the period, the strongest move inside the tracked group.

Traders who opened shorts against the rebound found themselves on the wrong side of a grind higher, the mirror image of the FOMO buying that marks market tops: this was capitulation from bears, not euphoria from bulls. The data covers forced closures only and says nothing about positions that remain open, so it cannot measure the leverage still sitting in the market. What it does establish is the direction of forced flows over the past day: predominantly upward, predominantly against shorts, and concentrated in the two largest assets by value.

Squeeze Fuel at $86,100

COINOTAG's read of the session: this was leverage cleanup, not the start of a fresh leg down. The arithmetic behind the headline share deserves a second look, because every ratio ties back to the same small denominator. Shorts took 82% of Bitcoin's $73.14 million and 76.68% of the market's $133.67 million, and both figures describe a flush of trapped bearish positions rather than broad destruction across the book. Squeezes of this shape typically drain the fuel that caused them, as losing positions are either closed or repositioned. A renewed bear market would require fresh short supply, and with Bitcoin (BTC) holding above $86,000, the tape gives no sign of that. The watch item is whether demand survives the next funding reset near $86,100.