Ether traders bore the brunt of a late-Thursday slide in crypto, with about $6 million in ETH positions wiped out over 24 hours — more than the $298 million seen in bitcoin, despite ether's market value being less than one-fifth the size of its larger rival's.

Total liquidations reached $1.19 billion over the same period, with more than $1 billion of that coming from longs — traders betting on higher prices — as interest-rate concerns, geopolitical tensions and warnings about artificial intelligence rattled leveraged markets.

A liquidation occurs when a trader borrows to make a bigger bet and losses eat through the collateral they put up, prompting the exchange to close the position automatically. That often means selling into an already falling market, pushing prices lower for the next trader in line. Falling prices tend to clear out longs first, while sharp rebounds do the same to shorts — a pattern that played out on both legs of Thursday's trade.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, rebounded to about $82,200 after President Trump ruled out a strike on Iran before the midterm elections. The rebound triggered roughly $25 million in liquidations over four hours, most of them from bearish traders caught on the wrong side of the move.

Ether hit hardest in relative terms

The largest single wipeout was a nearly $20 million ether position on Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange for leveraged trading.

Measured against its size, ether took about six times the damage. Its liquidations work out to roughly $1.2 million for every $1 billion of market value, compared with about $180,000 for bitcoin, whose market capitalization is more than five times ether's. Because only positions opened with borrowed money can be liquidated, the per-dollar figures gauge leveraged activity rather than asset size alone.

Ether fell more than 3% to about $2,490, while bitcoin lost about 1%. SOL bets accounted for another $71 million in liquidations, XRP for $34 million and NEAR for $25 million, with every other token combined adding about $119 million.

Macro nerves and an AI warning

Bitcoin slid from about $83,200 to as low as roughly $80,400 late Thursday after Federal Reserve minutes showed most officials expected another rate hike before year-end. A report that the Pentagon was preparing for renewed combat in Iran pushed oil higher, compounding pressure on risk assets.

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake's warning that AI could break the math securing crypto wallets sooner than expected added to the nerves. The concern echoes a separate, long-running debate in the industry over whether quantum computers could one day break the public-key cryptography that secures bitcoin and ether wallets. In a related report, bitcoin and ether holders were urged to enter 'bunker mode' against possible AI attacks.

Traders had been piling on leverage all week as bitcoin bounced between $83,000 and $87,000, leaving plenty of positions to knock over once the range broke.

Shorts pay for the bounce

About 78% of the roughly $25 million liquidated over the past four hours came from traders betting on further declines. In the past hour alone, shorts made up nearly $12 million of about $13 million in liquidations.

The squeeze comes a day before the anniversary of Oct. 10, 2025, when a record $19 billion was liquidated in a single day — roughly 16 times Thursday's total. Bitcoin now sits about $800 below $83,000, the level where Thursday's selling began. With Fed officials still signaling a possible hike before year-end and Iran headlines in flux, how much leverage traders rebuild in the meantime will shape the scale of any next flush.

Source: CoinDesk