- Crypto longs accounted for $404.15 million of the $436.44 million liquidated in four hours on Saturday as Bitcoin briefly fell below $80,000.
- BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said he dumped Maelstrom’s directional book, taking profits on ETH and other tokens amid dicey macro conditions.
- Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded large outflows late in the week, including roughly $635 million on Thursday.
Bitcoin briefly dropped below $80,000 on Saturday, triggering a sharp wave of forced liquidations concentrated in leveraged long positions, according to data from CoinGlass.
Of the $436.44 million in positions liquidated in the four hours to 1 p.m. ET, $404.15 million were longs, The Block reported. Most of the damage arrived in two concentrated bursts: $208.21 million in longs were liquidated in the 15 minutes from 10:15 a.m. ET as Bitcoin fell from about $80,640 to $80,100, followed by another $131.17 million from 11:15 a.m., per the same CoinGlass figures.
Bitcoin reached a low of roughly $79,280 around 11:20 a.m. ET before recovering to about $80,138 by 1 p.m., according to The Block. Ether liquidations totaled around $137 million in the period, close to Bitcoin’s share even though ETH’s market capitalization is substantially smaller. Broader 24-hour figures showed hundreds of millions in total liquidations, with longs dominating the losses, as tracked by BeInCrypto citing CoinGlass.
The sell-off coincided with a shift in tone from a prominent market participant. In a post on X, BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom CIO Arthur Hayes wrote that he had exited the fund’s directional book: “I dumped it all. The Maelstrom directional book, took profits on $ETH, $ENA, $UNI and other shitcoins. I think we gotta go down to go up. It looks a bit dicey out there in macro and geopolitical land,” according to the original post. On-chain trackers estimated the sales at roughly $22 million, led by thousands of ETH.
Institutional flows had already turned negative earlier in the week. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded approximately $635 million in net outflows on Thursday, the largest single-day withdrawal since June and enough to push October’s cumulative flows back into negative territory after a three-day inflow streak, according to Cointelegraph citing SoSoValue data. Combined Thursday and Friday outflows reached hundreds of millions more, adding to selling pressure into the weekend.
The episode underscores the market’s sensitivity to leverage and external catalysts, including equity weakness and geopolitical concerns. While the price recovered above $80,000 by early afternoon Saturday, the concentration of long liquidations highlights ongoing risk for leveraged traders as macro conditions remain unsettled.
