🧨 Major BTC Liquidation Events
1. March 12, 2025 – "Black Thursday"
BTC Price Drop: ~$8,000 to ~$3,800 in a day (~50%)
Liquidations: ~$1 billion in crypto positions
Cause: Global market panic due to COVID-19 lockdowns; cascading liquidations on BitMEX
Impact: Exchanges experienced outages; BitMEX’s matching engine went offline temporarily
2. May 19, 2021 – China Mining Crackdown
BTC Price Drop: ~$43,000 to ~$30,000 (~30%)
Liquidations: Over $8 billion in 24 hours
Cause: China’s renewed crackdown on crypto mining and leveraged long positions
Impact: One of the largest single-day liquidations in crypto history
3. December 3–4, 2021 – Overnight Flash Crash
BTC Price Drop: ~$57,000 to ~$42,000 (~25%)
Liquidations: ~$2.5 billion in leveraged positions
Cause: Low weekend liquidity + over-leveraging
Impact: Triggered stop-loss cascades across major exchanges
4. June 13, 2022 – Celsius & 3AC Crisis
BTC Price Drop: ~$28,000 to ~$20,000 (~28%)
Liquidations: ~$1 billion+
Cause: Celsius Network paused withdrawals; Three Arrows Capital (3AC) insolvency
Impact: Marked the beginning of a prolonged bear market
5. November 8–9, 2022 – FTX Collapse
BTC Price Drop: ~$21,000 to ~$15,500 (~26%)
Liquidations: ~$1 billion in 24 hours
Cause: FTX insolvency & Alameda exposure revealed by CoinDes
Impact: Major systemic risk; contagion across centralized exchanges and lenders
6. August 17, 2023 – Leverage Wipeout
BTC Price Drop: ~$29,000 to ~$25,000 (~14%)
Liquidations: ~$1 billion+ in 24 hours
Cause: Thin summer liquidity; leveraged long positions liquidated
Impact: Highest number of BTC liquidations in a single day in months
7. April 12–13, 2024 – CPI + ETF Sell-Off
BTC Price Drop: ~$71,000 to ~$60,000
Liquidations: ~$1.5 billion+ across BTC and ETH
Cause: Hot U.S. inflation data and spot Bitcoin ETF outflows
