Long Traders Took 81.77% Share of 24-Hour Crypto Liquidations, Led by Bitcoin (BTC)

The Long Squeeze, Quantified

Nearly 82 cents of every dollar of leveraged crypto positions wiped out in the past 24 hours belonged to traders betting on higher prices. Long liquidations accounted for 81.77% of the $312.59 million (about 429.7 billion won) in forced closures recorded across the derivatives market as of 11:01 UTC on August 29 — a share roughly 4.5 times larger than the $56.98 million taken off shorts. For every dollar of short positions closed against their holders, approximately $4.50 of longs went with them. The unwind swept every major venue type, from centralized order books to each decentralized exchange running perpetual contracts, after Bitcoin (BTC) slid 2.40% to $77,647 and Ethereum (ETH) dropped 2.80% to $2,435. Solana (SOL) lost 2.44%, Hyperliquid's HYPE token slipped 2.46% and XRP shed 2.29%, while Zcash (ZEC) held a 1.15% gain as the rare major in the green. The concentration is the defining feature of the session. Leveraged longs had stacked exposure into the week's firmer prices, and once spot momentum stalled, the crowded side of the book absorbed the forced selling first — a textbook long squeeze. A liquidation occurs when an exchange closes a margined position because its collateral no longer covers the required maintenance threshold, and cascades form as each closure pushes prices further against the next tier of longs. Notably, the damage clustered in the derivatives layer rather than in a broad spot exodus: the slide was sharp but contained, and nothing in the data suggests spot holders dumped comparable notional. What these figures measure is the market's leverage being reset — not a collapse in demand for the underlying assets.

Bitcoin Takes the Largest Share

By asset, the breakdown repeats the skew from the bottom up. Bitcoin took the largest single share of the day's liquidations at $142.86 million, with longs supplying $120.96 million — 85% of the coin's total. Ethereum followed at $92.70 million, 78% of it long-side. Solana's $17.76 million was 65% long, XRP's $11.73 million was 87% long, and the table's tail stretched well beyond crypto: gold (XAU) recorded $9.81 million in closures that were 96% long, Hyperliquid (HYPE) logged $9.23 million at 90% long, silver (XAG) $4.87 million at 97% long, and Ethena's ENA token $4.18 million at 69% long. Community and culture tokens — the tier of the market exemplified by ApeCoin and small DAO governance assets — sat far below the majors, confirming the session as a large-cap deleveraging event rather than an altcoin rout. Traders reading the tape through sentiment proxies, whether funding-rate screens or prediction markets such as Polymarket, would have found the same message: positioning, not conviction, drove the day. The methodology carries caveats worth stating plainly. The tally covers the top-20 liquidated assets and exchanges tracked by the derivatives aggregator, not the entire market's turnover, and per-venue and per-product accounting differences mean other trackers can publish modestly different totals. Pricing is referenced to CoinMarketCap listings. Commodities like gold and silver appearing in the table reflect leveraged metals contracts offered on crypto trading venues, not spot bullion markets. Even allowing for that margin of error, the direction of the skew is unambiguous — longs dominated every one of the eight largest liquidated names, and for traders sizing exposure across venues, our Best Crypto Exchanges guide outlines how liquidation engines differ. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

Funding Reset Decides the Next Leg

The primary record anchoring this story is the aggregated liquidation dataset itself, compiled from live exchange feeds rather than modeled estimates — and it shows the deleveraging was one-sided, not balanced. When 81.77% of a $312.59 million total closes against the same side of the book, the market is shedding leverage, not repricing fundamentals. Our desk's watch item from here is the funding rate: if it resets toward neutral while spot holds near $77,600 on Bitcoin, the flush has done its work; if it stays elevated, another tier of crowded longs remains exposed to the same forced-closure mechanics that produced this session's ratio.