The main blow came in a 15-minute window: from 17:15 to 17:30 MSK, $208.21 million in long positions were liquidated as the price moved from $80,640 to $80,100. The second volley was $131.17 million from 18:15 to 18:30 MSK. The low of the day was around $79,280 at 18:20 MSK; by 20:00 MSK, BTC had recovered to $80,138 (-1.9% for the day).
Liquidation is the forced closure of a leveraged position when the margin is no longer sufficient.
By asset: BTC - $158.45 million (94.2% longs), ETH - $136.72 million (92.7% longs). By venue: Binance $226.07 million, Hyperliquid $70.47 million (99.8% longs). The largest single liquidation of the day was an $11.85 million long position on ETH/USDT on Binance, closed at $2,307.65.
The backdrop was pressured by exchange-traded funds (bought like a stock, they hold Bitcoin itself): $635.49 million was withdrawn from U.S. spot Bitcoin funds on Thursday, and another $137.94 million on Friday - $773 million in total. Of Friday's outflow, 80% came from BlackRock's IBIT ($110.34 million), and Fidelity's FBTC accounted for $31.78 million. At the same time, over the week the funds are still up $304.73 million, with assets under management at $104.43 billion.
Open interest in crypto futures (the sum of all open positions) fell 2.2% to $140.10 billion - the market deleveraged but did not reset leverage to zero. ETH traded at $2,314 (-3.8%), XRP around $1.25, Solana fell below $100, and market capitalization stood at $2.68 trillion (-2.19%). The Fear and Greed Index is 42, neutral.
Coming up: the Fed meeting on October 27-28, September PCE inflation on October 29, and the U.S. midterm elections on November 3.
Did your long get caught in those 15 minutes?
$208 million in a quarter of an hour is not analysis, it is simply someone's margin that ran out. And what stings most is when you read the move correctly, but with a couple of thousand dollars in your deposit, the bounce from $79,280 to $80,138 turns into giving up. In prop trading, the company provides the trading notional: you pass its evaluation stage and trade its account for a share of the profit. There are still calm days before the Fed on October 27-28 to understand how this scheme works.