Shorts Paid 73% of $422M as BTC Retakes $80K, SOL Jumps 12%

Shorts paid the bill across the board

Liquidations flipped hard in the last 24 hours. The market wiped $422.4 million in positions and 73% of that, $308.5 million, came from shorts. The one-hour window shows an even sharper skew at 93% short, which means the squeeze is still running as of this snapshot. ETH led with $178.3 million in total liquidations, $127.1 million of it short side. BTC followed at $113.7 million with $88.7 million in shorts wiped, and SOL took third at $43.6 million where shorts covered $39.6 million, a 90.8% short share.

BTC reclaims $80K after a sharp round trip

Bitcoin traded back above the $80,000 mark, last reading $80,567 with a 3.7% gain over 24 hours on the aggregated feed. Binance and OKX both agree, quoting $80,608 and $80,600 with the same +3.6% move, so this is not a data artifact. The session low was $77,610, which puts the rebound at roughly 3.8% off the bottom. Funding stayed calm through the move, with Binance at 0.0062% and OKX at 0.0016%, far from the levels that usually mark a crowded long book. Shorts kept pressing into the rally and kept getting stopped out.

SOL is the squeeze leader

Solana is the standout. It jumped 12.5% to $107.29, confirmed by Binance at $107.46 and OKX at $107.37, after printing a low of $95.40 earlier in the window. Open interest climbed 21.2% to $5.44 billion, with Bybit adding 28.8% and OKX 24.1% over 24 hours. What matters here is that funding is not hot. Binance shows 0.01% and most venues sit near zero, so the OI build looks like fresh directional longs rather than leveraged FOMO at extreme rates. Short liquidations did the heavy lifting on the way up.

What changed versus the Tuesday long flush

Compare this to the previous session, where 24-hour liquidations ran 79% long side and hourly windows were also long-heavy. The tape has fully rotated. XRP tells the same story from the other side, longs paid $11.3M a day ago, today shorts covered $6.8M of its $10M total as XRP rose 6.2% to $1.46, confirmed by Binance and OKX. Exchange data shows Binance handled $177.9M of the 24-hour total with 73.6% shorts, while OKX ran $87M at 76% shorts. The pattern is consistent: bears are the ones bleeding. The question now is whether the OI rebuild sticks. Cold funding plus rising open interest can extend a move, but it also stacks fuel for the next flush if price stalls.

Data as of 07:10 Beijing time, August 28, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Gate, Bitget and other major exchanges.