Bitcoin Below $80K: $404M of Longs Liquidated in Four Hours, 99.8% Long on Hyperliquid

Bitcoin long liquidations returned on Saturday, October 24: $404.15 million of longs were force-closed in the four hours to 1:00 p.m. ET, out of $436.44 million in total liquidations, according to CoinGlass data reported by The Block. Bitcoin slipped to about $79,280 around 11:20 a.m. ET before recovering to $80,138. On Hyperliquid, 99.8% of the $70.47 million liquidated in that window came from longs.

Two days earlier, this blog covered a $418 million long flush that hit while spot ETFs were still buying. This time the spot bid was gone too. That difference matters for anyone reading the weekend tape, because it changes who was on the other side of the forced selling.

Bitcoin Below $80K: How the Four-Hour Flush Unfolded

The selling did not arrive as a steady grind. The Block counted $208.21 million of long liquidations in the 15 minutes from 10:15 a.m. ET, as BTC dropped from about $80,640 to $80,100. A second burst of $131.17 million followed in the 15 minutes from 11:15 a.m. ET. Two quarter-hour windows carried roughly 84% of the four-hour long total.

The same report put long liquidations between 8 a.m. and noon ET at $401.91 million, the largest four-hour long wipeout since the night of October 14, when $505.57 million cleared. Bitcoin accounted for $158.45 million of the window, 94.2% long. Ether added $136.72 million, 92.7% long.

On a 24-hour basis the numbers were larger. The Crypto Times, citing CoinGlass at 19:01 UTC, reported $820.78 million liquidated across 196,033 traders, with longs at $686.93 million or 83.7%. The session range for BTC ran from about $79,263 to $81,445.

Long Liquidations by Venue: Binance and Hyperliquid

Binance carried $226.07 million of the four-hour total, 96% of it long, per The Block. The largest single liquidation of the day was an $11.85 million ETH-USDT long on Binance, closed at $2,307.65. Across the full 24 hours, Binance accounted for 50.0% of all liquidations, according to The Crypto Times.

Hyperliquid's $70.47 million is the more one-sided print. A 99.8% long share means almost no shorts were caught on the bounce, so the onchain book was positioned almost entirely in one direction going into the drop. When a venue's liquidations skew that hard, the forced sells hit a thin bid at the same moment, which is how a $540 move from $80,640 to $80,100 turned into a nine-figure burst.

Open interest gave back less than the liquidation headlines suggest. Total crypto futures open interest fell 2.2% to $140.10 billion over the 24 hours, per The Block. A flush that removes $815 million in positions but only trims 2.2% of the book leaves most of the existing exposure in place for the next test of the low.

Spot ETF Outflows Removed the Cushion

The context separates this flush from the one on October 22. US spot bitcoin ETFs posted $137.94 million of net outflows on Friday, October 23, with BlackRock's IBIT accounting for $110.34 million, per SoSoValue data in The Block. That followed $635.49 million of outflows on Thursday, which The Crypto Times described as the largest single-day outflow since June 25.

The week still closed with $304.73 million of net inflows, because Monday through Wednesday brought in $1.078 billion. But the direction flipped in the second half of the week, and Saturday's selling arrived after two straight days of ETF redemptions.

Macro added pressure. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.6% on Thursday, its steepest daily drop since June 5, and Brent crude settled at its highest level since May 4 after Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, per The Crypto Times, which cited CNBC for the oil move. The FOMC meets October 27 and 28.

Arthur Hayes and the Weekend Positioning Read

At 2:18 a.m. ET on Saturday, Arthur Hayes posted on X that he had "dumped it all" from the directional book at Maelstrom, his family office, taking profits on ETH, ENA, UNI and other tokens, as reported by The Block. He wrote that he would wait on the sidelines for an all-clear signal.

One fund exiting does not move bitcoin by itself. What the post did was set the tone for a thin Saturday session where the marginal participant was a perp trader with a stop or a liquidation price, not a spot allocator. The Block linked the geopolitical worry to an Associated Press report that the State Department is reducing staff at US embassies in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and the UAE.

The recovery was mechanical as well. In the hour to 1:09 p.m. ET, liquidations dropped to $10.62 million, and $8.35 million of that was shorts, per The Block. Late shorts who chased the move below $80,000 were the ones squeezed on the way back above it.

What to Watch on the Orderflow Tape

The levels are defined by the session itself. The $79,263 low is where the last long cluster cleared, and The Crypto Times frames a sustained break below it as the trigger for another long cascade, with $81,000 to $81,445 as the zone where pressure shifts toward shorts. Those are the two prices that matter into the FOMC decision on October 28.

The cleaner signal is how price and flow behave on a retest. If BTC returns to $79,300 and cumulative volume delta keeps falling while open interest rises, new shorts are pressing into a low that already flushed longs, which is the setup for a squeeze like the one at 1 p.m. on Saturday. If CVD flattens while open interest drops, sellers are closing, not adding, and the low is more likely to hold.

On Buildix, the BTC pair view puts CVD, order book imbalance and whale activity on Hyperliquid on one screen, and the liquidation map shows where the next long and short clusters sit. The screener runs the same read across every pair, so the next one-sided book shows up before it unwinds.

Saturday's move was not a capitulation of the whole book. It was a fast removal of the most crowded longs on two venues, right after two days of ETF outflows. The positions that survived it are still there, and the next test of $79,263 will show whether they are buyers or the next round of forced sellers.