ETH Leads $362M Liquidation Rankings as ZEC Shorts Get Crushed for $65M
The past 24 hours wiped out $362.6M in leveraged crypto positions across major venues, with short sellers absorbing the bulk of the damage at $224.5M versus $138.1M in liquidated longs — a 61.9%/38.1% split that points to a broad, short-squeeze-driven move higher. Ethereum and Bitcoin dominate the top of the board by dollar volume, but the more telling signal sits further down the list, where smaller-cap tokens saw one-sided liquidation wipeouts that lined up almost exactly with the day's biggest percentage gainers.
Top 5 Liquidation Leaderboard
ETH tops the 24h ranking at $107.7M liquidated across 7,366 traders, split almost evenly between $54.3M in longs and $53.4M in shorts — a genuine two-way flush rather than a directional squeeze. BTC ranks second at $92.2M across 5,860 traders, but its mix skews short: $60.5M in shorts versus $31.6M in longs, or 65.7% short, consistent with a price push that caught bears offside. ZEC lands third with $72.9M total liquidated across 10,085 traders — the most one-sided book in the top five, with $65.0M (89.1%) coming from shorts, matching ZEC's 20.1% 24h price jump to $1,365.03. Rounding out the top five, XRP saw $11.3M liquidated and LSK $11.0M, both far behind the top three but still active across 2,483 and 11,315 accounts respectively.
Where the Squeeze Concentrated
Exchange-level data shows Binance absorbed the largest share of forced closures at $137.8M, followed by OKX at $86.1M. Hyperliquid stands out for concentration rather than size: of its $54.1M total, $52.3M (96.6%) came from short positions, and the platform's largest single liquidation of the day was an $18.4M BTC short at $76,525.40. That lines up with BTC's short-heavy liquidation mix noted above. Down the leaderboard, BR and SYN — liquidated for $4.2M and $2.3M respectively, roughly three-quarters of it from shorts — turn out to be the session's top percentage gainers, up 178.5% and 69.8% on 24h futures data, confirming the squeeze narrative extends well beyond the majors.
Options and ETF Backdrop
BTC options carry $33.7B in total open interest with a put/call ratio of 0.55; the nearest large expiry, September 25, alone holds $14.3B of open interest with a max pain of $72,000, roughly 5.7% below spot at $76,372.01. Market-wide open interest stands at $114.1B and average funding across majors is barely positive at 0.00014% per 8h, showing little leveraged conviction either way despite the liquidation flush. On the ETF side, spot BTC funds saw a $450.3M outflow on September 15 (a $578.4M net outflow over the trailing week), while ETH funds posted a smaller $141.5M outflow that day but remain net positive for the week at +$203.1M — a divergence worth watching against the short-covering seen in the derivatives data.
The verdict: BTC's short-liquidation bias and the $72,000 max-pain magnet for the September 25 expiry frame $72,000–$76,500 as the range bulls need to defend, with a clean break below $72,000 on rising short-side open interest the signal that would flip this from a squeeze into a genuine reversal. Data as of 12:05 Beijing time on Sep 17, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.