Derivatives Daily: $345M Liquidated as BTC ETFs Shed $450M, ZEC Shorts Squeezed
Total crypto derivatives open interest holds at $113.3B, but the past 24 hours delivered a lopsided $345.1M in liquidations — $199.9M on the short side against $145.2M on the long side, a 57.9/42.1 split across 87,611 forced closes. That skew signals a short squeeze rather than a long-side flush, and Bitcoin and ZEC were where it hurt most.
Liquidations: Shorts Get Run Over
Ethereum led by raw dollar volume at $99.3M liquidated (6,833 accounts), but the mix there was closer to even: $54.6M long versus $44.6M short, meaning ETH longs actually took the bigger hit as spot cooled. Bitcoin flipped the script — $85.2M total liquidated with shorts eating 62.3% ($53.0M) against $32.2M in longs, consistent with a squeeze higher. ZEC was the extreme case: of its $68.8M liquidated, 88.9% ($61.2M) came from shorts getting run over. Further down the board, LSK ($12.1M, 11,987 accounts) and XRP ($11.5M) rounded out the top five. By venue, Binance absorbed 39.3% of all liquidation flow ($135.8M), OKX took 23.2% ($79.9M), and Hyperliquid's $51.3M was almost entirely short-side pain (95.8%, or $49.1M) — matching a pair of whale wipeouts on the platform: one address lost roughly $23.0M across two BTC short liquidations near $76,450-76,525, while another shed about $9.25M on ZEC shorts.
ETF Flows: BTC Bleeds, ETH Holds the Weekly Line
The ETF tape tells a similar squeeze-then-reversal story. Bitcoin spot ETFs posted a single-day outflow of $450.3M on September 15, pulling assets under management down to $95.72B from $100.09B just a day earlier, when flows had actually been positive at +$160.0M. That single outflow was large enough to push the 7-day net flow negative to -$578.4M. Ethereum ETFs also bled on September 15, shedding $141.5M and dropping AUM to $15.42B — but because the prior sessions ran hot (+$121.0M on the 14th, +$216.4M on the 11th), ETH's 7-day net flow remains positive at +$203.1M, a meaningfully different trend than BTC's.
Options Max Pain and Sentiment: Caught Between Two Pins
With BTC trading near $76,148, the options market is pulling in two directions. The nearest expiry (September 18) carries a max pain of $77,500 on $1.70B of combined open interest ($942.7M calls, $761.1M puts) — a pin roughly 1.8% above spot. But the much larger September 25 expiry, holding $14.35B in total open interest ($9.39B calls versus $4.96B puts), carries a max pain of just $72,000. Total BTC options open interest sits at $33.62B with a put/call OI ratio of 0.55 and a 24h volume ratio of 0.85, both still call-tilted. Sentiment has cooled fast alongside the ETF outflow: the Fear & Greed Index sat at 69 (Greed) on September 15, fell to 51 on the 16th, and now reads 50 (Neutral) today — a two-day round trip from greed to indifference.
Verdict: the short-side liquidation skew and BTC ETF outflow are the two data points to watch together — as long as BTC holds above the $76,000-76,500 zone where Hyperliquid's biggest shorts just got run over, dip demand and the nearby $77,500 max pain keep a floor under price. That view breaks if 24h liquidation flow flips back to long-dominant (reversing today's 58/42 short skew) or if BTC ETF outflows extend past the current $578.4M 7-day total — either would open a path toward the $72,000 level where the much larger September 25 options expiry is pinned. Data as of 08:05 Beijing time on Sep 17, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.