Bitcoin Longs Absorb $126M of $144M in Liquidations as Price Slips to $75.6K
Bitcoin is trading at $75,558, down 1.7% over the past 24 hours, and the derivatives tape shows exactly who is paying for the drop: longs. Total liquidations across major venues hit $143.8 million in the past day, and $125.9 million of that — nearly 88% — came from long positions getting force-closed, versus just $17.8 million on the short side.
Long Liquidations Dominate the Tape
The skew toward long liquidations builds the further back you look. In the last hour, longs accounted for $2.38 million of $3.79 million in total liquidations (63%); over 4 hours that share rose to $4.79 million of $6.99 million (69%); over 12 hours it was $10.09 million of $16.08 million (63%). But the 24-hour window tells a different story — $125.9 million long versus $17.8 million short, an 88% skew — meaning the bulk of the damage, roughly $116 million, was concentrated in the 12-to-24-hour-ago stretch when price first pushed toward its session low. The five largest single liquidations on record were all longs: a $22.2 million position wiped out on Binance at $74,075.73, a $16.4 million position on Bitget at $75,754.60, and three more between $2.9 million and $4.2 million on Binance and OKX, clustered between $74,916 and $75,489.
Crowded Long Accounts, Skeptical Taker Flow
Account positioning explains why the cascade hit longs so hard. Across major exchanges, accounts are still net long: Bitget shows a 65.4%/34.6% long/short split (ratio 1.89), Gate 64.4%/35.6% (1.81), OKX 63.8%/36.2% (1.76), Binance 61.8%/38.2% (1.62) and Bybit 60.7%/39.3% (1.55) — an aggregate 63.2% long. But taker flow, which captures aggressive market-order pressure rather than static positioning, tells a more bearish story: Binance's taker buy/sell ratio is just 0.83 (45.3% buy vs 54.7% sell), Gate's is 0.54 (35.1% vs 64.9%), and only OKX is close to balanced at 1.05. That gap between a crowded long book and short-skewed aggressive flow is the classic setup for a liquidation cascade — passive longs get run over by active selling, and the liquidation data above shows exactly that playing out.
Open Interest Thins Out, Funding Stays Positive
Total open interest across 21 tracked venues sits at $42.0 billion, down 1.1% in 24 hours. Binance still commands the largest share at 19.4% ($8.14 billion, -1.4% in 24h), followed by Gate at 12.0% ($5.03 billion, -1.2%), Bybit at 10.2% ($4.28 billion, actually +1.1% in 24h despite the price drop), Bitget at 5.9% ($2.49 billion, -5.4% — the sharpest deleveraging of any major venue), and OKX at 5.1% ($2.12 billion, -1.6%). Bitget's outsized OI drop lines up with its $16.4 million long liquidation noted above. Despite the long-side purge, funding rates haven't flipped bearish: rates remain positive on nearly every major venue — Bybit at 0.0076%, Binance at 0.0068%, OKX at 0.0047% — with only CoinEx showing a sharp negative outlier at -0.060%. Longs are still paying to hold size even after getting flushed, which suggests conviction hasn't fully broken.
News context: Cointelegraph reported that spot Bitcoin ETFs saw their largest single-day outflow since June, adding macro pressure just as the derivatives market absorbed this long-side liquidation wave.
Verdict: the $74,076-$74,916 band — where the largest long liquidations already fired — is the level to watch; a clean break below it, with open interest still near $42.0 billion and long/short account ratios as high as 1.89 on Bitget, sets up another long-liquidation leg rather than a bounce. The view is invalidated if funding on Binance, Bybit and OKX turns negative in tandem with taker flow flipping positive (Binance's ratio is currently 0.83, Gate's 0.54) — that combination would mark long capitulation as complete and open the door to a short-covering relief rally. Data as of 02:01 Beijing time on Sep 17, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.