Crypto liquidations top $590M in one-hour sell-off
Leveraged crypto traders were forced out of positions in a sharp sell-off late on Oct. 29, 2026. Cointelegraph reported that more than $590 million in crypto positions were liquidated in about an hour, including nearly $570 million in longs. Other readings of that hour were higher, and prices of the largest tokens broke lower.
What happened
Watcher.Guru said Bitcoin fell under $78,500, Ether under $2,250, Solana under $96 and XRP under $1.25, with more than $600 million in leveraged long positions liquidated in 30 minutes. TokenPost reported the same four price breaks and the same 30-minute figure for long liquidations.
BeInCrypto, citing Coinglass, reported $627.7 million liquidated in a single hour, of which $606.6 million were longs, about 97% of that total. Short positions accounted for $21.1 million. Bitcoin made up $189.1 million of the hour, Ether $156.8 million and Solana $46.8 million. The largest single forced closure was an $11.09 million Bitcoin long on Binance, printed at $79,254. Binance accounted for $344.8 million of the hour, Hyperliquid $97 million and Bybit $77.3 million, according to BeInCrypto.
TokenPost published a nearby one-hour snapshot: $629 million in total, $607 million in longs and $21.74 million in shorts. Cointelegraph’s post, sent a few minutes later, used a lower figure of more than $590 million, with nearly $570 million in longs. The gap is what rolling liquidation feeds often show when they are read at different minutes.
On the path of the move, BeInCrypto said Bitcoin traded near $80,800 on Binance at 20:00 UTC and had fallen to about $78,300 by 20:35 UTC, roughly 3% in one candle, before bouncing above $79,100. Ether slid from about $2,335 to near $2,233. In a market report citing CoinGecko, Cointelegraph put Bitcoin around $78,674, down 3.1%, and Ether around $2,263, down 4%. Total crypto market capitalization fell 3.3% to about $2.73 trillion, and BNB traded near $702, down 7.2%.
Why it matters
The selling coincided with reports of large transfers from Binance-linked wallets. BeInCrypto said traders were reacting to an unexplained outflow from Binance hot wallets on the order of $2 billion, and that the first transfer it highlighted landed at 20:24 UTC, just ahead of the sharpest candles. Cointelegraph reported that blockchain security firm Blockaid had identified about $3.3 billion in suspicious transfers, while Arkham Intelligence tracked roughly $5.84 billion in wallets labeled in connection with the incident. Cointelegraph noted that neither figure is a confirmed theft amount.
Binance said it was investigating a potential security issue and that user funds were “completely safe,” according to Cointelegraph. BeInCrypto reported that founder Changpeng Zhao said the activity looked like a hack, while the exchange had not confirmed a loss in that account. Tether and Circle had frozen more than $2.3 billion in stablecoins associated with the incident, Cointelegraph reported. BeInCrypto separately said Tether had frozen more than 1.567 billion USDT tied to the outflow.
A liquidation is a venue’s forced close of a borrowed position once margin is no longer sufficient. Those sales can push price into the next cluster of leveraged bets. BeInCrypto said the hour was about three times a roughly $200 million unwind that had taken Bitcoin below $80,000 the previous Saturday. Over 24 hours, Coinglass counted 161,647 traders liquidated for $951.2 million, with about two-thirds of that in the final hour, according to BeInCrypto.
What's next
What follows depends on what Binance confirms and whether forced selling continues. The reports above do not settle a final loss figure, and public estimates of suspicious transfers still differ. Further movement from the wallets involved, additional freezes by stablecoin issuers, or a fuller statement from the exchange would change the information in the market.
Hourly and daily liquidation totals are not interchangeable. Trackers sample different venues and use rolling windows, so a print above $590 million and one near $628 million can describe the same burst. The figures in this report are attributed snapshots from Oct. 29, not a projection of where prices settle.
Sources
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