Ethereum Liquidations Reach $70.1M as Long-Short Skew Splits

Ethereum derivatives recorded $70.1M in liquidations over the past 24 hours, almost evenly split between $35.9M of short liquidations and $34.3M of long liquidations. At a spot price of $2,683.58, open interest stands at $26.4B after falling 1.7% over 24 hours, creating a market where leverage is being reduced without producing a clean directional washout.

Recent market coverage has mixed bearish chart readings with expectations that buyers could use weakness to accumulate, leaving the broader narrative divided rather than decisively one-sided.

Open interest is thinning unevenly

The concentration of positioning matters for the liquidation skew. Binance carries the largest reported share at 23.0%, or $6.1B, with its open interest down 0.3% in 24 hours and 0.2% over four hours. Gate follows with 9.9%, or $2.6B, but its 24-hour open interest has dropped 2.8%. Bybit holds 7.9%, or $2.1B, after a 2.4% daily decline, while Bitget represents 7.8%, also near $2.1B, after a 0.7% fall.

This is not a broad increase in leverage beneath the current price. The largest venues are mostly shedding exposure, and Gate and Bybit show the sharpest contraction among the leading shares. That reduces the immediate fuel for a sustained liquidation cascade, but it also suggests that rallies may need fresh positioning rather than simple short-covering.

Funding is positive, but the spread is wide

The ticker's eight-hour average funding reading is 0.00001743, modestly positive, yet venue-level rates are far from uniform. Binance is at 0.0% when rounded to one decimal, Bitget is also 0.0%, and Gate is 0.0%, while CoinEx is the clear negative outlier at -0.1%. OKX is slightly negative at -0.0%, whereas BitMEX reaches 0.0% at the same reporting precision.

The practical signal is not an extreme system-wide long premium. Instead, funding shows pockets of long demand alongside venues where shorts are willing to pay or where positioning is closer to neutral. That unevenness fits the open-interest data: leverage is being repriced venue by venue rather than expanding in a synchronized bullish rush.

Accounts lean long while takers resist

Account positioning is visibly crowded on the long side. The aggregate account reading is 64.0% long, led by Binance at 72.8%, Bitget at 68.8%, and Bybit at 67.1%. OKX is less stretched at 57.5%, while Gate is close to balanced at 54.1% long.

Active flow tells a more defensive story. The aggregate taker reading is 50.3% long, but Binance takers are 46.6% long and 53.4% short. Gate is substantially more aggressive on the short side, with only 19.1% of taker activity long and 81.0% short. This account-versus-taker divergence means passive positioning still has downside liquidation exposure, even as active traders lean against the long crowd.

The liquidation windows reinforce that tension. In one hour, longs accounted for $28.0K versus just $161.63 of shorts. Over four hours, long liquidations reached $190.9K against $149.0K for shorts. The balance flipped over 12 hours, with $1.3M of longs and $1.6M of shorts liquidated, before reaching near parity across 24 hours. The largest recorded short liquidation prices cluster from $2,709.25 to $2,733.72, including a $2.3M event at $2,714.36.

Verdict: The exclusive signal is a liquidation-skew downside bias while ETH remains below $2,709.25-$2,733.72 and open interest stays near or below $26.4B: crowded long accounts and short-leaning takers favor another squeeze against longs before a durable trend advance. This view is invalidated if ETH reclaims $2,733.72 while open interest rises above $26.4B and taker flow turns net long.

Data as of 14:05 Beijing time on Sep 26, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.