BTC Jumps Past $80K: $526.9M Wiped, 86% Were Shorts

BTC climbed back above $80,000 early Thursday Asia time, and the move carried a heavy bill for leveraged bears. Liquidations across major exchanges reached $526.9M in the past 24 hours, with short positions accounting for 86.4% of the total. The squeeze followed a slide that took BTC to $76,914 on Binance before buyers stepped in and reversed the tape.

Shorts carried 86% of the $526.9M wipe

Over the last 24 hours, $455.1M in short positions were liquidated against $71.8M in longs. BTC itself saw $225.1M wiped, and $212.9M of that was shorts, close to 95% of the coin's total. ETH shorts took the next hit at $98.5M out of the coin's $118M in liquidations. The skew sharpens the closer the window gets: the last four hours produced $356.4M in liquidations with 96% on the short side, and the most recent hour ran $76.5M with 91.7% shorts. The largest single print was a $5.3M short on Binance at $81,308, followed by a 40-BTC short position on Hyperliquid wiped near $78,646.

From $76,914 to $81,333 in one session

Binance priced BTC at $80,880 with a 24h gain of 4.56%, while OKX showed $80,866 and +4.59%, a rare case of the two books agreeing within a few dollars. The rolling session range ran from $76,914 to $81,333, which puts the recovery at roughly 5.1% off the low. Bears who opened positions below $77K during the September 2 flush are now underwater by a wide margin, and the liquidation cascade suggests many of them were carried out instead of cutting manually.

Open interest up 5.8%, funding still cool

BTC open interest rose 5.8% to $45.4B during the move. Binance added 8.4% and Gate 15.4% over 24 hours, so fresh capital came in on top of the short covering. Funding rates tell a different story: Binance sits near 0.009% per 8 hours, Bybit at 0.01%, and Hyperliquid close to zero. Mild funding alongside a sharp price move points to spot-led buying and short covering rather than a leveraged long melt-up. That distinction matters because the rally is not built on crowded longs, which also means there is less fuel for a long squeeze on the way down.

Hyperliquid bore the brunt of the bear wipeout

Exchange splits show where the pain concentrated. Binance processed $212.5M in liquidations, about 40% of the total. OKX followed with $104.6M and Bybit with $66.9M. Hyperliquid cleared $53.2M, a smaller number, but 99.6% of it was shorts, the most one-sided breakdown among major venues. Perp traders on Hyperliquid had leaned short into the earlier decline and paid for it in a single violent session.

What to watch next

The level that matters now is $80,000 as support. If BTC holds above it and funding stays below 0.01%, late short entries face another squeeze risk on any push toward $81,333 and beyond. On the flip side, open interest grew 5.8% during the rally, so new longs are also sitting in the book. A break back below $78,900 would trap that group instead. The cleanest signal to watch is funding: a move above 0.02% would mean leverage is piling in and the rally is getting fragile.

Data as of 00:12 Beijing time on September 4, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Gate, Bitget and other major exchanges.