Crypto Markets Rocked as $600M+ Liquidations Sweep Exchanges in 24 Hours

The crypto derivatives market underwent a strong surge of losses in the last 24 hours with increased volatility and aggressive leverage taking on positions in major exchanges. Even in December 16, 2025, the number of traders liquidated in this timeframe reaches 189,018, which speaks of the speed at which market sentiment changed. 

The magnitude of such liquidations is indicative of significant intraday price fluctuations that had taken the retail and professional traders by surprise, particularly those with highly leveraged long positions.

Long Positions Bear the Brunt of Liquidations

In almost every exchange, longs held the majority of the liquidation, highlighting that bullish crypto traders were unfairly hit. Binance registered a short liquidation rate of 14.63% under long liquidation rate of 85.37%. The same trend was observed in Bybit where the shorts makes 10.89% and longs make 89.11%. 

The situation was even more pronounced in hyperliquid where only 1.74% of liquidations occurred as shorts and an impressive 98.26% of liquidations occurred as longs.

Gate had 13.74% short liquidations versus 86.26% long. OKX had 24.33% short and 75.67% long positions and HTX had 20.55% short and 79.45% long positions. CoinEx had registered short liquidations of 12.22% and long liquidations of 87.78%. 

BitMEX was the most highly imbalanced trading platform, as just 0.27% of shorts were liquidated versus 99.73% longs, which supports the story of a market that was greatly overweighted on bullish leverage that was unwounded in a very short period of time.

Crypto Exchange Liquidation Volumes Reveal Market Pressure

Binance dominated all crypto exchanges with the highest liquidations totaling to $177.90M in liquidations within the 24-hour period. Bybit trailed with $158.46M, and Hyperliquid recorded $153.27M which is indicative of its increased presence in high leveraged trading business. Gate had recorded $71.15M liquidations and OKX had recorded $49.55M.

HTX registered $38.36M in liquidations and CoinEx a relatively low $5.16M. BitMEX showed the lowest figure in liquidation compared to the rest of the listed crypto exchanges at $1.17M. 

Ethereum and Bitcoin Dominate Asset Liquidations

Ethereum was the most liquidated crypto asset, and the amount was wiped off to $234.10M, worth about 79.84K ETH. Bitcoin came behind with $185.07M in liquidations, which is approximately 2.14K BTC. At position three, Solana registered at $36.87M, or approximately 291.07K SOL, indicating that it is still popular with leveraged traders.

XRP recorded miscellaneous liquidations of $15.94M, and this represents about 8.43M XRP. Dogecoin came in at $12.62M at an approximation of 97.82M DOGE. HYPE recorded a liquidation of $10.54M, which is equivalent to about 401.98K tokens, and ASTER liquidated $7.47M, or roughly 9.22M ASTER.

Mid- and Low-Cap Tokens Also Feel the Impact

Other than the significant assets, some mid- and low-cap tokens saw significant liquidations. ZEC also registered $6.46M in liquidations which corresponded to about 16.66K ZEC. PIPPIN recorded a figure of $4.40M which was equivalent to about 9.64M tokens. Liquidations of Cardano were $4.01M, or about 10.46M ADA.

Chainlink recorded $3.31M liquidated, which corresponded to approximately 259.60K LINK, whereas SUI recorded $3.33M, which equated to approximately 2.28M SUI. 

Largest Single Liquidation Highlights Leverage Risk

The biggest single liquidation order was one of the most noteworthy statistics of the last 24 hours, and it happened on Binance. BTCUSDT trading pair was the single liquidated position at a value of $11.58 million. Such a happening is enough to highlight the dangers of excessive leveraged positions in volatile crypto markets.

On the whole, the crypto liquidation data gives a clear picture of a market which was heavily geared to the upside and suddenly backfired thereof. The extreme prevalence of long liquidations, as well as large volumes in key exchanges and assets, indicates that downside risk was underestimated by traders. 

Since crypto volatility is high, such measures are a reminder that leverage can increase losses in the same way it enhances profits.