Liquidations
Why BTC liquidation data matters
A liquidation happens when a leveraged futures or perpetual-swap position gets force-closed by the exchange because the trader can't meet margin — price moved against them enough that their collateral no longer covers the position. Forced liquidations are real, executed trades, not projections, and clusters of them can accelerate a move: a wave of long liquidations sells into a falling market, a wave of short liquidations buys into a rising one.
Tracking where liquidations concentrate — by price and by time — shows where leverage was crowded, and where a similar move could trigger the next cascade.
How to read this heatmap
The grid plots price on the vertical axis against time on the horizontal axis, shaded by the notional value liquidated in that price/time cell — brighter means more forced selling or buying happened there.
- Long vs short split — longs liquidated means price fell through their stop; shorts liquidated means price rose through theirs.
- Largest single event — the biggest individual forced close in the selected window, often a signal of a large leveraged position getting wiped out.
- Recent events feed — a live tape of individual liquidations as they're captured, with venue and side.
Methodology & data
Venue coverage is Deribit, OKX and Bybit — real captured liquidation events, not modeled or estimated. Binance's public liquidation feed is not reachable from our infrastructure, so its volume isn't included; totals here are per-venue, not the whole market, and should be read as a partial but directionally useful sample rather than a market-wide total.
What is a BTC liquidation?
A forced close of a leveraged BTC futures or perpetual position by the exchange, triggered when the trader's margin can no longer cover their position as price moves against them.
Which exchanges does this data come from?
Deribit, OKX and Bybit — real liquidation events captured directly from each venue. Binance is excluded because its public liquidation feed isn't reachable from our infrastructure.
Why do liquidations cluster at certain price levels?
Leveraged traders tend to place stops and get liquidated near round numbers and recent swing highs/lows, since that's where clusters of similarly-sized positions were opened. A concentration of liquidations at a level often means that level absorbed a lot of leverage.
Is this the same as an options liquidation?
No — this tracks futures and perpetual-swap liquidations, not options. For BTC options positioning, see the gamma exposure and volatility surface pages.