Crypto liquidations reached $627.7 million in a single hour late Thursday, $606.6 million of it on bets that prices would rise, Coinglass data shows. Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $79,000 and Ethereum (ETH) under $2,240 as traders reacted to an unexplained $2 billion outflow from Binance hot wallets.
Binance says it is investigating a “potential security issue” and has not confirmed any loss, while founder Changpeng Zhao says it “does look like a hack.” The market priced the worst case before either spoke, and leveraged traders paid for it.
How fast the selling hit
Bitcoin traded near $80,800 on Binance at 20:00 UTC, according to TradingView. By 20:35 UTC it had spiked down to about $78,300, a drop of around 3% in one candle, before bouncing back above $79,100.
ETH fared worse. It slid from roughly $2,335 to a low near $2,233, a fall of more than 4%, before recovering to about $2,263.
The timing lines up with the on-chain move. The first transfer out of the Binance 14 wallet landed at 20:24 UTC, and the sharpest price candles printed within the following 15 minutes.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER — BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT 5-minute charts showing the drop, Source: TradingView]
Who lost money
A liquidation happens when a trader borrows to amplify a bet and the price moves far enough against them that the exchange closes the position by force. Coinglass logged $189.1 million in Bitcoin positions and $156.8 million in ETH positions wiped out in the hour, with Solana (SOL) a distant third at $46.8 million.
Short sellers, who profit from falling prices, lost only $21.1 million. The single largest forced closure was an $11.09 million Bitcoin long on Binance at $79,254.
Binance itself carried $344.8 million of the hour’s liquidations, more than half the total. Hyperliquid followed at $97 million and Bybit at $77.3 million.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER — Coinglass one-hour liquidation heatmap by exchange showing Binance at $344.8 million, Source: Coinglass]
That is three times the $200 million unwind that pushed Bitcoin below $80,000 last Saturday. Over 24 hours, Coinglass counts 161,647 traders liquidated for $951.2 million, and two thirds of that damage came in the final hour.
Why the market sold first
Bitcoin was already fragile. It had failed to hold $83,000 last week, and analyst Benjamin Cowen’s bearish Q4 roadmap had traders watching $80,000 as the line that mattered.
A breach at Binance, the largest exchange by volume, would also carry a different risk from a DeFi exploit. Stolen exchange funds tend to get sold, although Tether has since frozen more than 1.567 billion USDT tied to the $2 billion outflow, which takes most of the stablecoins out of play.
Source: BeInCrypto