$456M Liquidated: 1H 92.8% Longs vs 24H 52.6% Shorts

Liquidations reach $456M as time windows tell two stories

Across the major venues, liquidations in the past 24 hours totaled $456 million, with long positions paying $216.2 million and shorts $240 million. The total matters less than how it is split by time window. In the last hour, longs were wiped for $10.8 million against just $835K of shorts, which puts the one-hour long share near 93%. Over the full day, the balance tips the other way: shorts absorbed 52.6% of all cleared value.

The divergence is a footprint of how the session moved. BTC climbed to an intraday high of $81,270 on Binance, and the grind up ran over short sellers repeatedly. Then price slid back to around $78,800, and the late longs who bought the breakout took the damage instead.

BTC and ETH carry most of the bill

BTC led the per-coin ranking with $206.1 million wiped in 24 hours, of which shorts paid $117.5 million and longs $88.6 million. ETH came second at $124.4 million, split $76.3 million in shorts and $48.1 million in longs. SOL added $30.3 million, and XRP $15.5 million. XRP is the outlier: $12.2 million of its total came from longs, the opposite skew of the broader tape.

12-hour and 24-hour windows diverge sharply

Look at the intermediate windows and the pattern gets clearer. The 12-hour window shows longs paying $142 million of $166.3 million, about 85%. The 4-hour window is long-heavy as well at 85%. Only the 24-hour frame flips to shorts at 52.6%. In plain terms, the short squeeze did its damage earlier in the day, and the accounts now being cleaned out are the breakout chasers who entered as BTC approached $81K.

What to watch next

The 1-hour window flipping to roughly 93% longs usually marks the end of a squeeze rather than the start of one. When late longs keep buying into a fading high, the risk is a deeper pullback that triggers another round of long liquidations, especially with ETH sitting just above its $2,438 low. Funding and open interest data for BTC and ETH are the two things to watch. If OI keeps climbing while price stalls below $80K, the leverage built during the squeeze becomes the fuel for the next move.

Data as of 04:05 Beijing time on August 26, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Gate, Bitget and other major exchanges.