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Overnight on October 15, the cryptocurrency market experienced its largest wave of forced liquidations of margin positions since August. According to CoinGlass, the daily liquidation volume amounted to $939.30 million, with $791.62 million (84.3%) of all losses falling on holders of long positions (longs).
The sharp drop in prices led to a large-scale unloading of the derivatives market, ridding the industry of accumulated speculative ballast.
The main blow was taken by Ethereum ($286.11 million) and Bitcoin ($215.49 million). The largest recorded incident was the liquidation of a long position on the BTC-USDT pair on Binance worth $12.03 million at a price of $80,208.96, while Binance itself accounted for 52.3% of the total volume of closed orders.
At the same time, the sector of highly liquid altcoins with a high share of retail capital came under pressure: the volume of forcibly closed daily positions amounted to $12.82 million in XRP, $12.32 million in NEAR Protocol, and $12.18 million in Dogecoin. For the altcoin market, relaxed by prolonged growth, this correction became the first truly deep shake-up in recent months.
How the overnight scare turned into a perfect trap for those who were waiting for a drop
Despite the severity of the overnight ordeal, the technical picture points not to a trend change but to a controlled cleansing of the market. During the drop, the BTC price tested the dynamic support in the form of the 50-day moving average (MA 50), around $81,000, with jeweler's precision, where it met a significant volume of buying.
The fact that Bitcoin held above the psychological mark of $80,000, while the long-term support (MA 200) lies significantly lower, at $72,000, confirms the strength of the current bullish trend.
The subsequent short squeeze confirmed aggressive demand at the lows. As soon as retail traders, under the influence of panic, began opening short positions at the local bottom, the prices of BTC and ETH sharply corrected upward, triggering a cascading closure of "bearish" orders.
In just one hour, Bitcoin sellers lost $15.94 million (95.2% of all hourly liquidations for the asset), while Ethereum short sellers lost $19.41 million. Short positions on NEAR and DOGE also took a hit during the same hour, registering an instant wipeout of sellers.
At the moment, funding rates on key perpetual futures remain in a stable positive zone (0.005%–0.009%), which indicates that mid-term optimism among market participants has persisted after the technical cleansing of excess leverage was completed.
Arman Shirinyan
Dan Burgin
