Long liquidations total $436 million as bitcoin briefly breaks $80,000
Crypto traders betting on rising prices suffered a sharp wave of liquidations on Saturday, October 24, 2026, after bitcoin briefly fell below the $80,000 mark. In the four hours ending at 1 p.m. Eastern Time, $436.44 million worth of crypto positions were liquidated, according to data from CoinGlass, with $404.15 million of that figure coming from long positions alone.
The sell-off was triggered by a comparatively modest price move. Bitcoin dropped to approximately $79,280 at around 11:20 a.m. ET before recovering to $80,138 by 1 p.m. Even after the recovery, the cryptocurrency remained down 1.9% over the preceding 24 hours. Ether weakened further, falling 3.8% to $2,314.
The scale of the losses relative to the size of the price decline is the defining feature of the episode. A fall of roughly 1.7% from the $80,640 level to the intraday low was enough to wipe out more than $400 million in leveraged bullish bets, a reminder of how quickly automated exchange mechanisms can turn a routine dip into something far more damaging.
Two rapid bursts drove the damage
The liquidations did not unfold gradually. They occurred mainly in two concentrated bursts, each lasting roughly 15 minutes, according to CoinGlass data.
The first came at 10:15 a.m. ET, when about $208.21 million in bitcoin-related long positions were wiped out as bitcoin declined from roughly $80,640 to $80,100. The second burst followed at 11:15 a.m., when a further $131.17 million in longs disappeared during another 15-minute window.
The clustering matters. When leveraged positions are closed automatically by exchanges, the resulting forced sales add fresh downward pressure to the market, which in turn triggers further liquidations. This cascade dynamic explains how a move of less than 2% in bitcoin’s price produced losses ordinarily associated with far larger drawdowns.
Across the broader market, long liquidations between 8 a.m. and noon ET reached $401.91 million, the largest four-hour total since the night of October 14, when $505.57 million in long positions were eliminated. That earlier episode, barely ten days before, suggests the market has been operating with elevated leverage for some time, with traders repeatedly positioned for continued gains and repeatedly punished when momentum faltered.
The concentration of losses among bullish traders was pronounced. Longs represented 94.2% of bitcoin liquidations and 92.7% of ether liquidations, showing that traders positioned for continued gains bore the overwhelming majority of the losses. Shorts, by contrast, escaped largely unscathed, which is typical when a market moves lower but also indicates how one-sided positioning had become in the run-up to the decline.
Bitcoin and ether bore the brunt
Bitcoin and ether accounted for the bulk of the four-hour liquidation total. Bitcoin positions represented $158.45 million of the $436.44 million figure, while ether positions accounted for $136.72 million. The remaining losses were spread across the wider altcoin market, though the data indicates the two largest cryptocurrencies were the epicentre of the damage.
Ether’s steeper percentage decline, 3.8% against bitcoin’s 1.9% over 24 hours, meant ether longs were hit disproportionately hard relative to the size of their positions. The fact that more than 92% of ether liquidations were longs suggests traders had been particularly aggressive in betting on an ether recovery, a wager that failed as the token slid to $2,314.
The episode illustrates a well-understood but frequently ignored dynamic in crypto markets: leverage intensifies price movements in both directions. A brief move below a closely watched threshold, in this case $80,000, forced exchanges to automatically close leveraged bullish bets, accelerating losses and adding selling pressure. What might have been a routine technical pullback instead became a $400 million clearing event.
What the cascade reveals about market fragility
For market participants, the most important lesson from Saturday’s action is not the headline loss figure but what it reveals about the market’s underlying structure. Liquidation cascades of this kind occur when a large share of traders are positioned in the same direction, using similar levels of leverage, and holding positions clustered around the same price thresholds.
The $80,000 level appears to have functioned as just such a threshold. Bitcoin’s slide from $80,640 to $80,100 in the first burst was enough to begin the process, and the subsequent break below $80,000 in the second burst, which took the price to roughly $79,280, finished it. Traders who had placed stop-loss and liquidation levels just beneath the round number found their positions closed in rapid succession, and the forced selling pushed the price lower still.
The recovery to $80,138 by 1 p.m. ET offers a partial reassurance. Buyers stepped in once the cascade had run its course, and bitcoin reclaimed the level that had triggered the damage. But the episode matters because it highlights the market’s vulnerability to sudden cascades, particularly when traders are heavily concentrated on the same optimistic direction. The fact that this was the largest four-hour long liquidation event since October 14, itself a $505 million episode, indicates that leverage in the system remains elevated and that similar events are likely to recur.
Regulators and exchange operators have long flagged this dynamic. Leveraged trading in crypto remains lightly policed compared with traditional derivatives markets, and liquidation mechanisms that work automatically and instantaneously can amplify volatility rather than dampen it. For retail traders, the arithmetic is unforgiving: a position leveraged twenty times can be liquidated on a move of just 5%, well within the range of a normal trading day for bitcoin.
Outlook: elevated leverage keeps cascade risk alive
The immediate market question is whether Saturday’s flush-out has cleared enough leverage to stabilise the market, or whether more forced selling lies in wait at lower levels. The recovery to $80,138 suggests the first cascade has run its course, but bitcoin remains down 1.9% over 24 hours and ether is off 3.8%, so the broader trend has not turned bullish.
Investors tracking these swings should watch two indicators closely. The first is open interest in perpetual futures, which typically falls after liquidation events as positions are closed; a rapid rebuild of open interest at similar leverage levels would signal that the market has learned little. The second is the distribution of liquidation clusters, since the October 14 and October 24 events both show how round-number thresholds such as $80,000 act as magnets for forced selling.
For now, the data points to a market that remains structurally fragile despite the recovery in price. Two liquidation events exceeding $400 million in long positions within ten days is not a pattern of a calm market. Traders who survived Saturday’s cascade with their positions intact may find little comfort in the rebound, because the same conditions that produced this episode, heavy one-sided leverage clustered around obvious price levels, remain in place.
Readers following the wider market response can find ongoing reporting in our Bitcoin coverage, where price action and positioning data are updated as events develop.
