Crypto liquidations: $2 billion in 24 hours, mostly longs on bitcoin and ether

Leveraged crypto positions worth around $2 billion were forcibly closed within 24 hours, and almost all of them were bets on rising prices. Investing.com, citing CoinGlass, reported the figure for the period up to Sunday morning Asian time. Bitcoin alone accounted for $774 million and Ethereum for $488 million. The trigger was another weekend sell-off: overnight into Sunday, bitcoin fell as low as $62,112, its lowest level since July 14.

The number is more than a headline. It shows how much borrowed money was in the market and how quickly it disappears once the price moves against the majority. This article puts the liquidations into context, uses our own data to show how the ratio of long to short positions has shifted, and explains how large a price move has to be before a leveraged position is lost.

Crypto liquidations in 24 hours: around $2 billion, mostly longs

A liquidation is the forced closure of a leveraged position by the exchange once the collateral posted (the margin) no longer covers the losses. The trader loses all or almost all of the amount committed. A long bets on rising prices, a short on falling ones.

At around 7:55 a.m. CET on Sunday, the live overview from CoinGlass showed $600.5 million in liquidated bitcoin longs over the previous 24 hours against $152.4 million in shorts. For ether, $399.5 million in longs compared with $72.7 million in shorts. For both coins, roughly four fifths of the liquidations came from buyers who had used leverage. Much of it happened overnight: in the last twelve hours, bitcoin longs alone accounted for $431.6 million.

The figures from different snapshots vary because CoinGlass shows a rolling 24-hour window. Depending on the time of day, older liquidations drop out and new ones are added. For bitcoin, the range is therefore between about $753 million and $774 million, and for the market as a whole about $2 billion.

The pattern behind it matters more. When a long position is liquidated, the exchange sells it on the market. Those sales push the price down further and trigger the next liquidations. Traders call this a long squeeze: a chain reaction in which falling prices force more and more leveraged buyers out of the market.

Bitcoin and ether price after the crash: lows, prices and distance from the record

According to CoinGecko, bitcoin traded at $64,442 at 7:47 a.m. CET on Sunday, down 4.3 percent in 24 hours. The low of the day was $62,081. That leaves bitcoin about 49 percent below its record high of $126,080 from October 2025. Ether cost $1,793 at the same time, 5.8 percent less than the day before, after a low of $1,714. Its distance from the record of $4,946 is just under 64 percent. Investing.com puts the ether low at $1,711, the lowest level since July 8.

Smaller coins in the top 25 were hit even harder. Avalanche lost 10.6 percent in 24 hours to $7.23, Cardano 8.1 percent to $0.15, Litecoin 8.0 percent and Dogecoin 7.8 percent. Solana fell 6.7 percent to $70.47. Our running analysis of the crypto crash gives an overview of all major coins. Sentiment matches the numbers: the Fear and Greed Index from Alternative.me stands at 10 points, in the zone of extreme fear, after 13 points the day before.

The decline has stretched over several days. On a daily basis, bitcoin closed 3.5 percent lower on November 12, 4.3 percent lower on November 13 and 6.0 percent lower on November 14, according to CoinMarketCap. Readers following Ethereum more closely will find the details in our piece on the Ethereum crash to $1,715.

Long/short ratio on OKX: from 3.31 to 2.36 in two days

The long/short ratio shows how one-sided the market was. It divides the number of accounts with an open long position by the number of accounts with a short position. A value of 1 means balance, a value of 3 means three long accounts for every short account.

For bitcoin futures on the OKX exchange, this value stood at 3.31 at 10 a.m. CET on November 13, the highest in the past seven days. By the evening of the same day it was 3.24. Since then it has fallen almost without interruption and reached 2.36 at 7 a.m. CET on Sunday, the lowest value of the week. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on November 15, 2026, based on 168 hourly readings from OKX's public market data.

The move fits the liquidations. Our reading: some buyers had bet on a rebound in a falling market. When it failed to come, those positions were closed and the number of long accounts fell. A ratio of 2.36 is still well above 1, however, so more accounts remain on the buy side than on the sell side. The ratio counts accounts, not amounts: a single large short account can outweigh many small long accounts.

Open interest and funding: leverage in the market is shrinking

Open interest is the total value of all open futures contracts. When it rises, new borrowed money is entering the market; when it falls, positions are being closed, voluntarily or through liquidation. Our explainer what open interest is covers exactly what the metric measures.

On OKX, open interest in bitcoin contracts fell from a daily value of $3.87 billion on November 12 to $3.24 billion on November 14. That is roughly 16 percent less in two days. On the decentralized derivatives exchange Hyperliquid, open bitcoin contracts on Sunday morning covered about 36,970 BTC, or roughly $2.38 billion, plus ether contracts worth about $1.1 billion. cryptoticker.io also compiled these figures itself on November 15, 2026.

The funding rate is a regular payment between the long and short sides of perpetual futures, contracts without an expiry date. When it is positive, longs pay; when it is negative, shorts pay. On OKX, bitcoin most recently settled at a slightly negative rate of minus 0.0038 percent per eight-hour period, and the current period stood at plus 0.0014 percent on Sunday morning. Both values are close to zero, so extreme overheating on the buy side can no longer be read from them. The market has shed part of its leverage, but not all of it.

Why the price crashed: ETF outflows and uncertainty ahead of the Fed

Liquidations amplify a move; they do not cause it. The sell-off started with outflows from US spot bitcoin ETFs. According to Investing.com, investors pulled a net total of almost $3 billion between October 30 and November 13, including about $1.07 billion in the past trading week. It was the seventh session in a row with net outflows. At the same time, the supply of stablecoins shrank by $17 billion over the past month, a sign that capital is leaving the crypto market.

Monetary policy adds to the pressure. Investing.com points to additional uncertainty around the US Federal Reserve's December meeting. Rising interest rates make risky assets less attractive, and cryptocurrencies are among the riskiest asset classes. A detailed look at the reasons is available under why bitcoin is falling.

On the charts, bitcoin has broken through important levels. Investing.com cites the break of the 200-day moving average at around $73,000. On Saturday the price had already fallen below the 200-week moving average, a level that often acted as a floor in earlier bear markets.

Will bitcoin fall below $60,000? The liquidation zone between $59,500 and $62,600

After a night like this, the obvious question is how far the price can still fall. Nobody can give a serious price forecast. What can be shown is where further liquidations are waiting. According to Investing.com, the analytics firm Glassnode sees a marked cluster of potential liquidations between $59,500 and $62,600. If bitcoin falls into this range, more long positions could be forcibly closed, which would accelerate the decline.

The overnight low of around $62,100 was already at the upper edge of this zone. That leaves investors with two scenarios. If bitcoin holds above $62,000 and the long/short ratio does not climb sharply again, part of the leverage has already left the market and the risk of another cascade falls. If the price slips below $60,000, however, a psychologically important round number would have given way, and the price would sit in the middle of the zone Glassnode identified. Historical comparisons and scenarios are covered in our piece on how low bitcoin can fall.

The conditions under which a recovery would be possible are set out in the scenarios under when bitcoin could rise again.

Leverage from 10x to 100x: the price move that triggers liquidation

Leverage multiplies the gain and loss of a position relative to the collateral posted. With $100 of margin and 10x leverage, you control a position of $1,000. The arithmetic works in both directions, and that is exactly what many traders experienced over the weekend.

• 10x leverage: if bitcoin rises 10 percent, the stake doubles. If bitcoin falls 10 percent, the stake is gone. In practice the exchange closes the position slightly earlier because it requires a minimum level of collateral.
• 20x leverage: a move of about 5 percent against you is enough for a total loss.
• 50x leverage: about 2 percent is enough.
• 100x leverage: a move of roughly 1 percent ends the position. Over the past 24 hours, bitcoin swung between $62,081 and $67,442, a range of more than 8 percent.

A worked example using this weekend's numbers: a trader who went long at $67,000 with 10x leverage lost the entire margin at a price of around $60,300. Bitcoin did not fall quite that far. With 20x leverage, though, the threshold was already around $63,650, and the price fell well below it overnight. A trader who went short at $67,000 with 10x leverage, by contrast, was up about 73 percent on the stake at the overnight low. Leverage never works for one side only.

Our perp DEX comparison shows how perpetual futures differ on decentralized exchanges and what fees they charge.

Stop-loss orders and position size when trading long and short

A stop-loss is an order that closes a position automatically once the price reaches a set level. It limits the loss before the exchange liquidates. In fast markets like this one overnight, however, the order can be filled below the intended level because buyers are missing. This effect is called slippage.

Position size matters at least as much. Many experienced traders risk only a small share of their capital on any single trade. Working that way, a trader can survive a run of losing trades. Anyone who puts an entire account on one direction with high leverage needs only one night like this to lose everything.

A price crash can be traded in either direction. A short profits if the price keeps falling, a long bets on a rebound. Both are speculation. This section explains the mechanics and is not a recommendation: anyone using leverage decides for themselves and should only commit money they can afford to lose.

Regulated trading venues under MiCA: where investors in Germany trade crypto

In the EU, the MiCA regulation (Markets in Crypto-Assets) has governed since the end of 2024 which providers may trade and hold crypto assets for clients. In practice, a provider with a MiCA licence is supervised by a European authority, in Germany by BaFin. Our overview of regulated crypto exchanges shows which platforms hold such a licence.

In Germany, leveraged bets on crypto prices are offered mainly by brokers in the form of CFDs. A CFD (contract for difference) means you do not own the coin; you only trade on its price change, long or short. Retail clients in the EU face strict leverage limits on crypto CFDs, well below the levels offered by crypto derivatives exchanges. Providers and terms are listed in our crypto broker comparison.

Risk warning: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. A large share of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

To buy or sell without leverage, you trade the coin directly on an exchange. Our piece on whether to buy or sell bitcoin looks at whether selling makes sense in this situation.

Crypto liquidations: Glassnode sees the next zone from $62,600

Around $2 billion in liquidations, a long/short ratio that has fallen from 3.31 to 2.36 and shrinking open interest show that the market has shed part of its leverage. It has not fully cleared: on OKX, more than twice as many accounts are still long as short, and Glassnode sees the next cluster of potential liquidations just below the overnight low.

1. Check your leverage: if your liquidation threshold lies within the past 24 hours' range of just over 8 percent, a single further move is enough. You can compare providers' fees and leverage limits in the perp DEX comparison.
2. Set your levels: decide on stop-loss and position size before you trade, not afterwards. The broker comparison shows which brokers offer long and short positions with stop orders.
3. Choose your venue: to get in or out without leverage, trade on an exchange with a MiCA licence. Fees and offerings are listed in the crypto exchange comparison.

(As of November 15, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)