Crypto Liquidations Top $404M as Shorts Get Squeezed, Korea Sets 2027 Tax

Crypto News

The cryptocurrency market absorbed roughly $404.38 million in leveraged position liquidations over the past 24 hours, derivatives open-interest data shows, with bearish traders bearing the brunt of the damage. Short liquidations totaled about $291.74 million against $112.63 million in long liquidations, meaning nearly 72% of the forced unwinds hit traders who had bet on falling prices. The pattern unfolded even as headline assets traded in a tight, modestly positive range — a configuration that quietly punished accumulated downside leverage. The figures point to a broad short squeeze rather than a directional breakout, with stop-outs cascading across major venues as prices ground higher into resistance and crowded bearish positioning unwound in rapid succession.

Bitcoin anchored the move. Trading near $64,000, the largest cryptocurrency saw short liquidations dominate across every timeframe — roughly $79.9 million in shorts cleared over 24 hours against about $21.4 million in longs, with the four-hour window showing an even starker $91.6 million in short stop-outs. Ether, hovering close to $1,700, recorded the second-largest tally at approximately $36.86 million in liquidations on the 24-hour heatmap. The concentration in the two majors underscores how thin directional conviction remains: prices barely moved, yet leverage built against them was flushed out quickly across centralized derivatives books, leaving bearish bets the clear losers of the session.

The squeeze bit hardest in the altcoin complex. Solana slipped 0.37% to around $186 yet absorbed roughly $13.29 million in four-hour short liquidations, while Sui — down a marginal 0.20% near $2.92 — emerged as the standout, with about $24.6 million in shorts cleared over four hours. Dogecoin, Hyperliquid’s HYPE token and Zcash all logged short liquidations exceeding their long counterparts despite muted or positive price action. The recurring theme: bearish bets unwound even where prices barely budged, a signal that crowded short positioning had quietly accumulated across mid-cap names before a coordinated unwind dragged stop levels up.

Exchange-level data illustrates how unevenly the pressure landed. Of the $13.9 million liquidated in the latest four-hour window, Binance accounted for $7.1 million — 51.11% of the total — followed by Bybit at $2.09 million and OKX at $1.79 million. Notably, the long-short mix diverged by venue: Bybit and OKX skewed toward long liquidations, while Gate and HTX showed short liquidations exceeding 60% of their respective totals. For traders running leverage or automated ai-trading-bot strategies — and across DeFi lending markets such as Aave — the dispersion is a reminder that open interest and stop-out clusters concentrate differently across platforms, amplifying slippage during fast unwinds.

In policy developments, South Korea’s long-delayed framework for taxing digital-asset gains is set to take effect on January 1, 2027, after two prior postponements. Under the rules, crypto disposal and lending income above 2.5 million won annually will be taxed as other income at 20%, rising to roughly 22% once local income tax is included. Critics highlight a structural gap: the regime offers no loss carryforward, so an investor who books heavy losses one year cannot offset them against gains the next. The debate sharpens as policymakers weigh whether digital-asset taxation mirrors the lighter treatment applied to equities, or instead arrives as a heavier penalty on risk-taking.

Beyond crypto-native headlines, biotech firm Iovance Biotherapeutics drew attention after its solid-tumor T-cell therapy Amtagvi secured conditional approval from Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration — the drug’s third global marketing authorization. The company’s investor-relations disclosure reported first-quarter revenue of about $71 million, up roughly 45% year over year, with Amtagvi’s US sales contributing some $60 million and Proleukin adding $11 million. Iovance reaffirmed 2026 revenue guidance of $350 million to $370 million and holds roughly $319 million in cash, funding operations into at least 2028. The US FDA also cleared an investigational new drug application for IOV-5001, a next-generation IL-12-armed TIL candidate.

Taken together, these threads sketch a market caught between fragile sentiment and resilient positioning. COINOTAG’s aggregate data frames the backdrop: the Fear & Greed Index sits at 23, firmly in Extreme Fear, even as total crypto market capitalization holds near $1.84 trillion and Bitcoin dominance climbs to 70% — a flight-to-quality posture that channels capital toward majors even as Bitcoin trades far from its all-time high while altcoins remain vulnerable to leverage shocks. The short squeeze, the Korean tax timeline and Iovance’s clinical milestones share a common subtext: capital is repricing risk in real time. When fear is extreme yet shorts still get squeezed, bearish conviction looks crowded — and policy will shape where that risk-taking ultimately settles.