Crypto Liquidations Hit $1.26 Billion as Bitcoin Slides Toward $58K

Bitcoin dropped to an intraday low near $58,000 on June 26, its weakest level since September 2024, after a hotter-than-expected US inflation print and a more hawkish Federal Reserve sent risk assets sharply lower. In the 24 hours around the move, total crypto liquidations reached roughly $1.26 billion across more than 200,000 traders, according to CoinGlass, and once again, leveraged longs absorbed nearly all of the damage.

Bitcoin was changing hands above $61,800 earlier on June 26 before momentum broke, sliding through $59,000 and briefly tagging $58,000 before a partial recovery back toward $61,000. CoinGlass put 24-hour liquidations at about $1.26 billion, with more than $450 million in long positions wiped out in roughly a single hour. The largest individual position closed was a $38 million BTC trade.

The long-short split tells the story. Long liquidations ran several times larger than shorts, a market that had spent weeks leaning into upside, flushed in hours. Open interest fell alongside price, the signature of forced unwinding rather than fresh shorting. Bitcoin now sits roughly 53% below its October 2025 peak near $126,000.

This was not a one-off. The same mechanism drove June's earlier wipeout, when Bitcoin fell from roughly $67,000 to $59,100 in 48 hours and over $3 billion in leveraged positions were closed, with longs accounting for around 85% of BTC losses.

The loop is mechanical. When price falls into a dense cluster of liquidation prices, the exchange force-closes those positions, and each forced close adds market-sell pressure, pushing price into the next cluster of stops below it. The selling feeds on itself until the leverage is exhausted. Crucially, that trigger runs off the mark price, not the last traded price, which is why a position can be closed even when the chart's most recent print hasn't quite reached the level you were watching.

The catalyst came from outside crypto. A hotter inflation reading reinforced expectations that rates stay higher for longer, and the Fed, holding its benchmark between 3.5% and 3.75% under Chair Kevin Warsh, flagged the possibility of hikes ahead. Nasdaq and S&P 500 futures fell hard in the same window, with megacap tech names dropping alongside Bitcoin. This was broad risk-off, not a crypto-specific story.

Institutional flows piled on. US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a net outflow of nearly $692 million on June 25, the largest single-day redemption in a month, and analysts note that annual growth in ETF Bitcoin holdings has flattened to near zero, meaning the funds are now adding to sell-side supply rather than absorbing it. A roughly $10.6 billion quarterly options expiry, the bulk of it out of the money, sat on top of an already fragile market.

Days like this are where funded accounts are won or lost, and survival comes down to preparation rather than reaction. The traders who got hurt were over-leveraged and crowded into the same long. The ones who didn't had defined their risk before entry.

Three habits matter most in this kind of tape. Know your exact liquidation level before you open, not after. Size positions so a single adverse move is a small fraction of your account, never a knockout. And resist adding to a losing long mid-cascade, the dip that keeps dipping is built from the previous level's dip-buyers. This is exactly why risk management is the skill that keeps funded accounts alive when volatility spikes.

Whether June 26 marked the low or the start of a deeper leg toward the $55,000 zone that some analysts are watching will likely hinge on incoming inflation data and ETF flows, not any single crypto catalyst. The more measured read: the leverage has been partly cleared, but conviction has not yet returned.

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This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Trading leveraged crypto involves substantial risk. Mubite funded accounts are simulated.