$1.5 Billion Liquidation Wave Hits Bitcoin, Ether and XRP—Then the Squeeze Flips

The selloff after Binance’s security breach did what leverage-heavy crypto markets often do: it turned a sharp move into a cascade.

Bitcoin, ether, XRP, and other major assets fell hard enough to force more than $1.5 billion in leveraged positions to close. Then the rebound began trapping traders who had rushed to bet on an even deeper collapse.

CoinDesk reported $1.53 billion in liquidations over 24 hours, citing CoinGlass data. Long positions accounted for roughly $1.29 billion, or 83.8% of the total.

Bitcoin positions represented about $499 million, ether about $358 million, and XRP about $38.1 million. Hyperliquid followed Binance with about $251.4 million in liquidations, while Bybit recorded roughly $186.5 million.

Most of the losses landed in the latest 12 hours of CoinDesk’s snapshot, which accounted for roughly $1.37 billion in liquidations. Binance alone recorded about $754.6 million in forced closures, nearly half of the market-wide total.

Bitcoin traded down to roughly $76,460 before recovering toward $78,500. The rebound then started forcing traders with short positions to buy back into the market.

CoinDesk said the largest individual closure tracked by CoinGlass was an $11 million Bitcoin long on Binance.

The sequence explains the violence. Forced selling pushed into an already weak market, but once prices stabilized and bounced, short sellers became the next source of forced buying.

Leverage made the fall faster.

A leveraged trader controls a larger position by posting only a portion of its value as collateral. When the market moves too far against that position, the exchange closes it automatically.

Liquidated longs create sell orders at the worst possible time, adding pressure as prices fall.

CoinDesk reported that Binance handled nearly half of the market-wide forced closures, recording about $754.6 million in liquidations. The largest single liquidation tracked in the report was an $11 million Bitcoin long on Binance.

That concentration is especially notable because the original shock came from Binance itself. The exchange has pledged to cover customer losses, a commitment that Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor said he expected Binance to honor.

🚨 JUST IN: Michael Saylor says he expects Binance to make customers whole after pledging its balance sheet to cover losses.

He calls the incident a lesson for the wider crypto industry. pic.twitter.com/YMjPI8YRMu

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) October 30, 2026

The breach investigation also matters to market confidence. Binance said the attacker used an on-chain delegation mechanism to obtain execution authority over a hot wallet, bypassing normal approval controls.

That detail helps explain why the exchange is rebuilding withdrawal infrastructure instead of treating the incident as a routine service outage.

Binance Hacker Used a Self-Destruct Mechanism to Erase Traces, Teng Says.

Co-CEO Richard Teng says the attacker used EIP-7702 to gain on-chain execution approval over a hot wallet, a delegation that bypassed Binance's normal approval controls. Binance is rebuilding its… pic.twitter.com/7AdZ6SOxCP

— Decrypt (@DecryptMedia) October 30, 2026

Then the squeeze changed direction.

Bitcoin fell to roughly $76,460 before recovering toward $78,500, according to CoinDesk. Ether moved back above $2,200 after dipping below that level.

As the recovery gathered pace, traders betting on additional declines started getting liquidated too.

In the four-hour window cited by CoinDesk, shorts accounted for $57.3 million of $85 million in liquidations. In the latest hour of that snapshot, shorts represented about 95% of forced closures.

Closing a short requires buying back the asset, so a rebound can feed on itself just as a leveraged selloff can.

That does not mean the damage is over or that Bitcoin has found a durable floor. Binance still has to restore withdrawals safely, prove the new controls work, and give customers confidence that the exchange can absorb the loss without creating another problem.

But the tape delivered one clear lesson: the first wave of forced selling did not become an unlimited spiral. Once the market found buyers, leverage started punishing the other side. In a market this crowded, the fastest move is often the one that runs out of traders to liquidate first.

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