Ether Liquidations Lead Crypto's $1.19 Billion Flush

Ether liquidations dominated Thursday's crypto flush. CoinDesk reported about $356 million of ether positions were closed over 24 hours, more than bitcoin's $298 million, even though bitcoin's market value is more than five times ether's. Across the market, liquidations totaled $1.19 billion, and more than $1 billion of that came from longs.

What happened

A late-Thursday slide hit leveraged books after Fed minutes showed most officials expected another rate hike before year-end and an Axios report on Pentagon preparations for Iran combat pushed oil higher, CoinDesk wrote. Bitcoin slid from about $83,200 to as low as roughly $80,400. Ether fell more than 3% to about $2,490, while bitcoin lost about 1%.

CoinDesk said the largest single wipeout was a nearly $20 million ether position on Hyperliquid. Measured against market value, ether took about six times the damage: roughly $1.2 million liquidated per $1 billion of market value, versus about $180,000 for bitcoin. SOL accounted for another $71 million of liquidations, XRP $34 million and NEAR $25 million, with other tokens adding about $119 million.

CryptoTimes, citing CoinGlass data timestamped October 8 at 17:15 UTC, put the 24-hour total slightly lower at $1.12 billion across 187,006 traders, with ether at $318.30 million and bitcoin at $286.15 million. Longs accounted for $1.04 billion of that CryptoTimes snapshot, versus $83.73 million of shorts. The largest single order in that cut was a $19.98 million ETH-USD position on Hyperliquid. Different CoinGlass timestamps explain the gap with CoinDesk's later $1.19 billion / $356 million figures; both describe the same flush.

After Trump ruled out a pre-midterms Iran strike, bitcoin recovered toward about $82,200, and CoinDesk said roughly $25 million was liquidated over four hours, with about 78% of that from shorts. In the following hour, shorts made up nearly $12 million of about $13 million liquidated.

Why it matters

Ether liquidations at this scale show where the leverage sat. Traders had been adding risk while bitcoin bounced between $83,000 and $87,000, CoinDesk noted, leaving crowded long books once the range broke. Ethereum researcher Justin Drake's warning that AI could break wallet math sooner than expected added to the nerves, the same report said.

The calendar also mattered psychologically. CoinDesk observed that the squeeze came a day before the anniversary of October 10, 2025, when a record $19 billion was liquidated in a single day — roughly 16 times Thursday's CoinDesk total. That memory can amplify forced selling when stops cascade.

Exchange concentration reinforced the speed. CryptoTimes said Binance alone recorded $602.14 million of liquidations in its 17:15 UTC cut, with Hyperliquid at $149.91 million and Bybit at $142.22 million. When the largest venues flush together, altcoins with thinner books tend to gap harder than bitcoin, which is what the six-times-per-market-value ratio captured.

The flush also reset positioning into the weekend. CoinDesk noted that traders had piled on leverage all week while bitcoin ranged between $83,000 and $87,000, and CryptoTimes' exchange breakdown showed longs making up more than 92% of liquidations on major venues in its earlier snapshot. That skew explains why ether's percentage drawdown exceeded bitcoin's even before the Hyperliquid whale ticket printed. When the bounce came, the same leverage that punished longs briefly punished shorts, but the absolute dollar damage from Ether liquidations still dominated the day.

Market-structure details reinforce the point. CoinDesk's per-token list put SOL, XRP and NEAR in the next tier of forced selling, a reminder that mid-cap perpetual markets inherit bitcoin's macro shock and then amplify it. CryptoTimes' 12-hour and four-hour cuts ($974.84 million and $754.22 million respectively in its 17:15 UTC pull) show the cascade was front-loaded rather than a slow grind. For desks that mark risk on CoinGlass heatmaps, the practical lesson is to treat ether open interest — not only bitcoin — as the fragile hinge when oil and Fed minutes hit together.

What's next

Shorts paid for the bounce, but the overhang from Ether liquidations does not vanish in one hour. CoinDesk left bitcoin about $800 below the $83,000 level where Thursday's selling began. Watch whether ether can reclaim $2,500 alongside a bitcoin hold above $82,000, the combination BitDelta flagged as stabilizing in CoinDesk's companion rebound piece, and how perpetual funding rates evolve after the squeeze.

For the broader tape, see our report on bitcoin below $83,000 as oil and yields hit and earlier coverage of ethereum and solana ETF outflows. The next test is whether spot demand returns after a session that cleared more than a billion dollars of leveraged longs.