Rollercoaster bitcoin, ether price action leads to $280 million liquidations
Price volatility around the Federal Reserve’s rate decision cleared positions for roughly 90,000 traders, with unusually equal losses for bulls and bears.
Jul 30, 2026, 6:59 a.m.
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Summary
Crypto prices went almost nowhere over the past day. The leverage underneath them was destroyed anyway.
About $286 million in positions were liquidated across 87,294 traders in 24 hours, according to CoinGlass, while bitcoin closed flat at roughly $63,900 and ether slipped to $1,900. Longs accounted for $186 million of the damage and shorts $100 million, the signature of a market that moved hard in both directions and settled back where it started.
Bitcoin’s split shows it plainly. Roughly $57 million of bitcoin positions were cleared, and the balance was almost even, about $28 million in longs against $29 million in shorts. The price swung between $63,247 and $64,660 during the window, a range of barely 2%, which was enough to clear traders positioned either way.
Ether recorded the largest total at about $58 million, tilted toward longs, as prices ranged between $1,920 and $1,850.
The single biggest liquidation was a $2.9 million bitcoin position on Binance.
The Federal Reserve’s rate decision on Wednesday sits inside that window, and the bulk of the damage came in the 12 hours around it, with $188 million liquidated and longs bearing $130 million.
As such, a more unusual wreckage was in equities. About $19 million in SanDisk positions were liquidated on crypto derivatives venues, along with $10 million in Micron, $7 million in SK Hynix and $7 million in SOXL, a leveraged semiconductor ETF. These are perpetual futures on stocks and funds, listed on crypto exchanges and traded with the same leverage as bitcoin.
Almost all of it was long. Micron’s liquidations split roughly seven to one in favor of longs, $9 million against $1 million, and SanDisk’s ran two to one. Traders were using crypto rails to bet on the AI memory trade going up, and they were positioned that way heading into the sharpest chip selloff of the year.
But the timing turned out unfortunate. SK Hynix fell 17% on Wednesday after reporting profit up 557%, short of expectations. Korea’s Kospi has dropped more than 40% from its June peak.
It is the second time this week that equity perpetuals on crypto venues have caused real losses. On Monday, a single trade on a thin Korean pre-market venue dropped Trade.xyz’s SK Hynix contract 19% and triggered $60 million liquidations, which the exchange has since agreed to reimburse.
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