Ether traders absorbed the heaviest losses in a late-Thursday leverage flush, with about $345 million in ETH positions liquidated over 24 hours against roughly $262 million for Bitcoin, according to CoinGlass liquidation data. The gap is notable because Ether’s market value is less than one-fifth of Bitcoin’s, yet Ether produced more forced selling in absolute terms.
Across the market, total liquidations reached $1.09 billion over 24 hours, with more than $940 million coming from longs that had bet on higher prices, and 181,262 traders were caught in the move. The single largest wipeout was a nearly $20 million Ether position on Hyperliquid, the decentralized perpetuals exchange. Ether fell about 3% to near $2,490 while Bitcoin slipped roughly 1% to around $82,400.
Why Ether took the heavier hit
Measured against market size, Ether’s damage ran several times deeper. Its roughly $345 million in liquidations against a market value of about $295 billion works out to more than $1 million for every $1 billion of capitalization, while Bitcoin’s $262 million against a market value above $1.6 trillion is only about $160,000 per $1 billion. That leaves Ether’s per-dollar liquidation intensity roughly seven times Bitcoin’s, a sign of how much more leverage had accumulated in the smaller asset while Bitcoin ranged between $83,000 and $87,000 earlier in the week.
A liquidation closes a borrowed position automatically once losses eat through the trader’s collateral, selling into an already falling market and pushing prices lower for the next trader in line. Smaller, thinner markets feel that forced flow more acutely, which is why the same risk-off impulse translated into a much steeper move in Ether than in the larger, deeper Bitcoin market.
What triggered the flush
Three pressures converged late Thursday. Federal Reserve minutes showed most officials expected another rate hike before year-end, a report that the Pentagon was preparing for renewed combat in Iran pushed oil higher, and Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that artificial intelligence could break the cryptography securing wallet keys sooner than expected. Each reinforced risk-off sentiment, and the leverage built up during the range-bound week amplified the move once prices broke lower. Bitcoin’s slide below $83,000 earlier in the session had already set the macro backdrop.
The bounce and what to watch
Bitcoin recovered toward $82,200 after President Donald Trump said the United States would not strike Iran before the midterm elections, and shorts bore the brunt of the snap-back: about 78% of the roughly $25 million liquidated over the following four hours came from traders betting on further declines. The rebound left Ether near $2,490, still below the levels where Ether’s ETF outflows began to accelerate. The flush also arrived a day before the one-year anniversary of October 10, 2025, when a record $19 billion was liquidated in a single day, roughly sixteen times Thursday’s total. Whether this flush clears the excess leverage or marks only a pause now depends on whether the bounce holds, because the heaviest Ether long-liquidation cluster formed near the $2,450 area and a break back below it would open the door to another leg lower.
