Ether leverage broke harder than bitcoin’s, by a wide margin
Ether’s market value is less than a fifth of bitcoin’s. Its liquidation bill on Thursday was larger anyway. Traders holding leveraged ether positions lost about $356 million over 24 hours, compared with $298 million for bitcoin, according to CoinDesk. Measured against each asset’s size, ether absorbed roughly six times the damage: about $1.2 million liquidated for every $1 billion of ether’s market value, versus about $180,000 for bitcoin.
The gap shows where leverage had piled up heading into the drop. Traders had been adding bullish bets all week as bitcoin traded in an $83,000 to $87,000 band, according to CoinDesk, leaving a stack of positions exposed once that range broke.
Key Takeaways
- Ether liquidations totaled about $356 million in 24 hours versus bitcoin’s $298 million, even though ether’s market value is less than a fifth of bitcoin’s, according to CoinDesk.
- Crypto-wide liquidations reached $1.19 billion, with more than $1 billion coming from long positions betting on higher prices, per CoinDesk.
- CryptoBriefing put long positions at 85% to 95% of total liquidations and estimated 100,000 to 190,000 traders were affected at peak.
- Bitcoin fell from about $83,200 to roughly $80,400 before recovering to about $82,200 after President Trump said the U.S. would not strike Iran before the midterms.
- The flush landed a day before the anniversary of Oct. 10, 2025, when a record $19 billion was liquidated in a single day, about 16 times Thursday’s total.
The numbers, and where they diverge
CoinDesk’s figures put ether liquidations at $356 million against bitcoin’s $298 million. CryptoBriefing’s tally runs lower and wider: ether liquidations between roughly $318 million and $356 million, bitcoin between $215 million and $300 million. Both outlets agree on the core finding: ether broke at about six times bitcoin’s rate relative to market size. KuCoin cited both reports and reached the same conclusion without adding new figures of its own.
Price moves also carry a range. CoinDesk has ether down more than 3% to about $2,490 and bitcoin down about 1%. CryptoBriefing puts ether’s drop at 4% to 5.7%, with ETH breaking below $2,500 and bitcoin slipping under $81,000. The largest single liquidation was a nearly $20 million ether position on Hyperliquid, a decentralized leveraged-trading exchange, per CoinDesk.
Beyond the two majors, SOL accounted for $71 million in liquidations, XRP for $34 million and NEAR for $25 million, with every other token combined adding about $119 million, according to CoinDesk. CryptoBriefing identified Binance, Bybit, OKX and Hyperliquid as the venues where activity concentrated, with Binance handling more than half of ETH trading volume in some reports.
What set off the selling
Two macro triggers and one technical warning converged. Federal Reserve minutes showed most officials expected another rate hike before year-end, according to CoinDesk, and a report that the Pentagon was preparing for renewed combat in Iran pushed oil prices higher. Ethereum researcher Justin Drake also warned that AI could break the cryptography securing crypto wallets sooner than expected, adding to the unease, per CoinDesk.
On the technical side, CryptoBriefing noted that bitcoin broke through support in the $81,000 to $84,000 range and ether fell below the closely watched $2,500 level. Stop-losses and liquidation thresholds tend to cluster just under round numbers like that, amplifying the selling once the levels gave way.
CryptoBriefing attributes ether’s larger hit to its higher-beta behavior: ether tends to move more than bitcoin in both directions, which draws traders seeking bigger returns and, with them, more leverage. The disparity in liquidations, the outlet said, points to positioning in ether that was more stretched than bitcoin’s heading into the drop.
Shorts pay as bitcoin bounces
The move reversed late Thursday. Bitcoin recovered to about $82,200 after President Trump ruled out a strike on Iran before the midterm elections, according to CoinDesk. About 78% of the roughly $25 million liquidated over the following four hours came from traders betting on further declines, and in the final hour alone, shorts made up nearly $12 million of about $13 million liquidated.
What to Watch
Friday marks the anniversary of Oct. 10, 2025, when a record $19 billion was liquidated in a single day, about 16 times Thursday’s total, per CoinDesk. Bitcoin now sits roughly $800 below the $83,000 level where Thursday’s selling began. CryptoBriefing frames ether reclaiming $2,500 and bitcoin recovering the $81,000 to $84,000 zone as the markers that would suggest the market has absorbed the damage.
