ETH, BTC, ZEC Top the 24h Liquidation Board as $238.6M in Shorts Get Squeezed

Derivatives desks took a beating over the past 24 hours: liquidations across major venues totaled $238.6 million, and short sellers ate the overwhelming majority of it — $188.1 million versus just $50.6 million in long liquidations, a 78.8%/21.2% split. Ethereum and Bitcoin topped the coin-level board, but the real story is how one-sided the squeeze was further down the cap table.

Top of the Board: ETH, BTC, ZEC

ETH led all coins with $49.0 million liquidated (4,991 traders caught), split $12.1 million long against $36.9 million short — a 75.3% short share. BTC followed closely at $46.3 million ($10.1M long / $36.2M short, 4,464 traders), an even more lopsided 78.2% short share. The real outlier was ZEC: $34.9 million liquidated across 7,584 events — more liquidation events than BTC despite a smaller notional total, pointing to a retail-heavy, high-leverage crowd getting run over. ZEC's short share hit 81.0%, the highest of the top three.

Mid-Cap Squeeze: SOL, NEAR, UNI, ARB

This is where the short squeeze turned extreme. SOL saw $21.1 million liquidated with a 93.3% short share — only $1.4 million of that was long liquidations. NEAR ($12.0 million liquidated, 91.4% short) moved in lockstep with its spot action: NEAR ripped 30.5% to $3.499 on $2.05 billion of 24h futures volume, exactly the kind of move that torches short books. UNI told the same story — $9.5 million liquidated (89.1% short) alongside a 27.4% rally to $8.609 on $1.84 billion volume. ARB rounded out the group with $7.4 million liquidated (87.1% short) as it posted the day's biggest major-cap gain, up 37.4% to $0.22627 on $1.10 billion in volume.

Small Caps: ONE, HYPE, CNPY — and One Loser

ONE stood out for a different reason: despite pumping 30.1% to $0.0014938 on $1.31 billion volume, its $6.0 million liquidation total was only 64.1% short-weighted — the most balanced book of any top-15 coin, and its 8,115 liquidation events were the highest count on the entire list, a sign of low-priced, high-leverage churn rather than a clean squeeze. HYPE ($5.1 million liquidated) was almost purely one-directional at 93.0% short. CNPY ($3.6 million liquidated, 67.6% short) climbed 29.0% to $0.4997 on $155.3 million volume. The mirror image showed up in LSK, one of the day's worst futures losers at -14.6% to $0.42858: its $2.5 million liquidation total flipped the script, with longs making up 60.6% of the damage as leveraged buyers got flushed on the way down.

Where the Flow Concentrated

Binance alone processed $107.7 million of the liquidation flow — more than OKX ($61.9 million) and Bybit ($22.7 million) combined. Total open interest across the market sits at $116.6 billion with average funding still positive at roughly 0.0029% per 8h, meaning perp traders were net long into the squeeze rather than defensively short. The Fear & Greed Index reads 56 (Greed), consistent with a market that just ran shorts over rather than one that's panicking.

News context: aggregated liquidation trackers flagged an unusually high share of forced short closures on mid-cap alts overnight, consistent with the broad short-squeeze pattern seen across NEAR, UNI, ARB and SOL in this data set.

The Verdict

With BTC's options index trading at $77,315 against a Sep 25 max pain of $72,000 and a tighter near-dated cluster around $76,500-$77,500, dealers are positioned for price to stay elevated into expiry — and a 79% short-liquidation share over the past 24 hours backs that up. The squeeze is intact as long as short-side liquidations keep dominating: in the most recent 4-hour window, longs took just $5.0 million versus $75.7 million in shorts (93.3% short share), even more skewed than the 24h average. What would invalidate this: if that 4h ratio flips and long liquidations start outpacing shorts — signaling the short-covering rally has exhausted itself and leveraged longs are now the ones getting flushed — treat that as the signal the squeeze is over, not a dip to buy. Data as of 12:05 Beijing time on Sep 18, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.