Crypto’s short sellers just lived through their worst 24 hours in recorded history.
Traders wiped out nearly $2.74 billion in bearish crypto positions between Wednesday and Thursday. Bitcoin surged toward $70,000, the largest single-day short liquidation since CoinGlass began tracking data in 2021. It even eclipsed the short-side carnage from the October 10, 2025 crash. Bears lost $2.47 billion amid a larger, $19 billion market-wide deleveraging.
The numbers tell a lopsided story. Total liquidations across the market topped $3 billion, hitting more than 172,000 traders. Shorts made up roughly 92% of the damage outnumbering long liquidations by more than 10 to 1, with longs losing a comparatively modest $257 million.
The Squeeze
It happened fast. More than $1 billion in Bitcoin shorts were liquidated in a single hour, pushing BTC’s full-day total to $1.42 billion. Ethereum shorts weren’t spared either, shedding $1.13 billion, while Solana added another $104.67 million to the carnage. The single biggest casualty: a $48.8 million Bitcoin short on Hyperliquid.
Bitcoin itself rocketed from a Wednesday low of roughly $64,100 to briefly touch nearly $69,900 a swing of more than $5,700 before settling around $69,100 during Thursday’s Asian trading hours, up almost 8% on the day. The catalyst was two-fold: the U.S. Treasury’s move to double long-term bond buybacks, which loosened liquidity and pulled yields lower, paired with upbeat signals emerging from a White House crypto summit.
12 Seconds That Erased $24 Million
The most brutal individual story belonged to a Hyperliquid trader operating under the wallet “pension-usdt.eth,” known on-chain as “Pension Fund.” Earlier in the year, this trader had built close to $49 million in profits from a string of well-timed shorts, including sizable wins against both ETH and BTC. Confident in the thesis, they’d held a 50,000 ETH short for roughly two months.
Then ether ripped higher and the position unraveled in twelve seconds flat, between 04:51:03 and 04:51:15 UTC Thursday. On-chain records show the liquidation happening in five brutal chunks:
- 9,989 ETH at $2,193
- 20,698 ETH at $2,209
- 15,830 ETH at $2,214
- 1,871 ETH at $2,236
- A final 1,417 ETH absorbed by Hyperliquid’s insurance fund, after no buyers remained to take the other side
In those same twelve seconds, ether’s price jumped roughly $43 a feedback loop where the forced buying from the liquidation itself kept driving the price higher, making each successive chunk of the short more expensive to close than the last.
By the time it was over, the trader had lost nearly $24 million roughly half of everything they’d made shorting the market earlier in the year and was left holding just over $35 in the account.
What It Means
The rally’s speed is real, but its foundation is worth questioning. Much of Thursday’s buying pressure came from liquidations forcing shorts to cover, not from fresh organic demand a distinction that matters for anyone trying to gauge whether this move has legs.
If nothing else, the Pension Fund liquidation is a clean, brutal case study in what leverage does when a market turns violently against a thesis even a thesis with a winning track record behind it.
