Market Shock: Over $300M in Crypto Liquidations as Long Positions Face Major Selloff

The cryptocurrency market experienced a severe deleveraging event on December 23, 2025, with traders paying a heavy price for their bullish bets. According to Coinglass data cited by TechFlow, a staggering $300 million in crypto liquidations occurred within a single 24-hour window, painting a bleak picture for leveraged traders who found themselves on the wrong side of sudden price movements.

Long Positions Bear the Brunt

The liquidation data reveals a stark asymmetry in market pain distribution. Of the $300 million total, long positions accounted for $268 million in liquidations, while short positions sustained only $32.3 million in losses. This 8:1 disparity underscores how aggressively traders had positioned themselves for upside, leaving them vulnerable to any sharp downturns.

Bitcoin and Ethereum bore the brunt of the selling pressure. Bitcoin’s $106 million in liquidations consisted primarily of long closures ($101 million), with shorts contributing a comparatively modest $5.2 million. Ethereum’s situation proved even more dramatic—$735.6 million in total liquidations, with longs wiped out to the tune of $671.96 million against shorts’ $63.6 million.

Scale of the Liquidation Event

The sheer number of traders caught in this deleveraging cascade underscores the market’s brutal efficiency. Nearly 92,000 individual traders were liquidated across all exchanges and trading pairs. The single largest liquidation event hit Hyperliquid’s BTC-USD perpetual contract, where one trader faced a $4.43 million wipeout in what amounts to a cautionary tale about leverage during volatile market conditions.

What This Means for the Market

When this magnitude of crypto liquidation occurs in such a compressed timeframe, it typically signals either a sudden catalyst (regulatory news, macro shift) or the unwind of overleveraged positions ahead of key market moves. The overwhelming concentration of liquidations in long positions suggests that traders had become increasingly complacent, building positions without adequate risk hedging—a common pattern before sharp reversals in crypto markets.