Sharp price swings surrounding the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision forced roughly 90,000 traders out of leveraged positions, with losses split unusually evenly between bullish and bearish bets.
Major cryptocurrencies ended the 24-hour period largely unchanged, but that stability hid significant volatility around the Fed meeting. Rapid moves in both directions triggered a wave of futures liquidations as leveraged traders were caught on the wrong side of the market.
According to CoinGlass, around $286 million worth of crypto positions were liquidated across 87,294 traders within 24 hours. Long positions accounted for approximately $186 million of the losses, while short positions represented about $100 million, highlighting a market that swung sharply before returning close to its starting point.
Bitcoin liquidations showed that both bulls and bears suffered. About $57 million in bitcoin positions were wiped out, with losses almost evenly distributed between long and short traders — roughly $28 million in longs versus $29 million in shorts. Bitcoin moved between $63,247 and $64,660 during the period, a relatively narrow range of less than 2%, but the volatility was enough to liquidate traders positioned in either direction.
The largest single liquidation involved a $2.9 million bitcoin position on Binance.
Ether saw the highest total liquidation volume, with around $58 million in positions cleared, mostly affecting long traders. Ether traded between $1,850 and $1,920 during the period. At the latest update, bitcoin was trading near $63,900, little changed from 24 hours earlier, while ether remained around $1,900.
Most of the liquidation activity occurred around Wednesday’s Fed rate announcement, as the closely watched event triggered sudden price swings. The move resulted in about $188 million in liquidations, with long positions accounting for roughly $130 million.
An unusual portion of the losses came from equity-linked perpetual futures available on crypto exchanges. Approximately $19 million in SanDisk positions were liquidated, along with $10 million in Micron contracts, $7 million in SK Hynix positions, and another $7 million tied to SOXL, a leveraged semiconductor ETF. These products are stock and ETF perpetual futures traded through crypto platforms with leverage similar to bitcoin futures.
Nearly all of those liquidations came from long positions. Micron’s losses were heavily concentrated among bullish traders, with around $9 million in long liquidations compared with $1 million in shorts. SanDisk positions saw a similar pattern, with long liquidations roughly double those of short positions.
Traders had been using crypto derivatives platforms to gain exposure to the AI memory chip rally and entered the selloff positioned for further gains. However, the timing proved unfavorable as semiconductor stocks suffered their sharpest decline of the year.
SK Hynix shares plunged 17% on Wednesday despite reporting a 557% increase in profits, as results failed to meet elevated market expectations. South Korea’s Kospi has now fallen more than 40% from its June peak.
This marked the second major disruption involving equity perpetual futures on crypto platforms this week. Earlier on Monday, a single trade in a thin Korean pre-market market caused Trade.xyz’s SK Hynix perpetual contract to drop 19%, triggering around $60 million in liquidations. The exchange later agreed to reimburse affected traders.
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