Ethereum (ETH) Led $28.5 Million in Crypto Liquidations Over 24 Hours

Ethereum (ETH) Took the Largest Toll

Leveraged positions worth $28.49 million were forced closed across the crypto derivatives market in the 24 hours ending 11:00 UTC on Sunday, October 4, derivatives tracking data shows. The total, drawn from the twenty most heavily liquidated assets, splits unevenly. Short positions accounted for $21.04 million, or 73.87% of everything wiped out, while long positions took $7.44 million; shorts were closed out at roughly 2.8 times the rate of longs. That imbalance only emerges when prices grind upward and squeeze traders positioned for a pullback. The pattern held at the asset level. Ethereum (ETH) took the largest single-asset toll at $7.51 million, and 94% of that came from short positions. Bitcoin (BTC) followed with $7.13 million, 69% of it shorts. Bitcoin price stood near $85,300 at the time of the snapshot, up about 0.8% over 24 hours, while Ether traded around $2,703 with a 0.7% daily gain. Those live readings match the conditions under which the closures occurred: modest upward drift rather than a violent spike. A liquidation is mechanical rather than discretionary. When a leveraged position's margin no longer covers its potential loss, the exchange closes it automatically at market, and the aggregate record of those automatic closures is what the derivatives data captures. Ether's outsized share is consistent with its role as the dominant liquid staking collateral and its deep derivatives markets, where per-position leverage tends to run higher than on most assets. The total stands without a same-span comparator in the data reviewed, so its size reads as a record of conditions, not a ranking. What the split reveals matters more than the sum, and the per-asset figures sharpen that picture considerably.

Short Skew Reached Far Down the Board

Below the two majors, the per-asset table shows how widely the squeeze reached. PUMP logged $3.26 million in closures, 76% of them shorts, and Zcash (ZEC) $2.86 million with a near-even 51% short share, evidence that liquidation risk is not confined to assets with long-established tokenomics. Worldcoin (WLD) stands out as the session's only sizable long-skewed book: $1.74 million in closures, 60% from longs, a signature of a token drifting lower while assets around it rose. NEAR recorded $1.71 million, 79% shorts; Solana (SOL) $1.45 million with 98% shorts; and BNB $763,800, 71% shorts. The price board behind these closures was uniformly green at the snapshot, taken at 20:00 Korea Standard Time (11:00 UTC). Bitcoin printed $85,281, up 0.77% on the day, and Ether $2,702, up 0.67%. Solana gained 1.48%, XRP 1.17% and Zcash 1.27%, while Hyperliquid (HYPE) added 2.99%. The correlation is straightforward: the harder an asset climbed, the more of its closures came from shorts, with Solana's 98% short share the cleanest example on the board. Traders watching sentiment through the Crypto Fear and Greed Index will read the session the same way either way: this was positioning being flushed, not panic selling into a decline, and the absence of long-side stress in the majors backs that reading. Whether the drift that squeezed these books matures into the kind of sustained advance associated with a bull market is the open question the next few sessions will answer.

What the 2.8-to-1 Split Measures

Our read of the aggregated derivatives record is that the session's most load-bearing measurement is the 2.8-to-1 short-to-long closure ratio, stamped at 11:00 UTC on October 4. Nothing in the data provides a prior period to measure $28.49 million against, so we decline to rank it. What the record does establish is the direction of pain: $21.04 million against shorts against $7.44 million against longs, concentrated in Ether and Bitcoin. Whether the climb that squeezed those positions develops further, the figure by itself closes the session.