◇ REPLAY
Liquidation post-mortems
Static charts. illustrative · delayed data.
Jun 10–20, 2022
Celsius & 3AC — June 2022 Forced Deleveraging
Insolvent lenders did not just fail quietly — they sold collateral into perp markets. BTC dropped while Celsius froze withdrawals and Three Arrows Capital's margin calls became everyone else's mark price.
8 STEPS
Nov 30 – Dec 8, 2021
The December 2021 Weekend Flush
A $2.5B weekend liquidation wave: BTC shed ~20% in two days while books were thin, funding was still positive, and leveraged longs learned that Saturday liquidity is not weekday liquidity.
8 STEPS
Nov 4–12, 2022
The FTX Depeg Weekend
As FTX unraveled over a November weekend, BTC perp markets fractured: index feeds diverged across venues, funding swung wildly, and the gap between mark price and last trade became the number that decided who got liquidated.
7 STEPS
May 5–16, 2022
LUNA / UST — May 2022 Contagion
When Terra's UST depegged, ETH perps became a contagion thermometer: index and oracle stress, funding pinned negative, and a levered market learned that stablecoin failure is not isolated to one token.
8 STEPS
March 12–13, 2020
Black Thursday — March 2020
Black Thursday: BTC halves in a day, and the cascade only stops when the exchange goes down.
6 STEPS
May 10–20, 2021
The May 2021 Cascade
Open interest climbed into record highs while funding stayed persistently positive — longs were crowded and paying carry. A single intraday wick through ~$30k triggered cascading liquidations that wiped billions in OI before price recovered above $40k.
7 STEPS
October 10–11, 2025
October 2025: The $19B Cascade
The largest liquidation in crypto history: $19B in 24 hours, and the day ADL stopped being a footnote.
7 STEPS
Aug 2–8, 2024
Yen Carry Unwind — August 2024
A TradFi carry-trade unwind hit crypto perps: the Bank of Japan rate shock rippled through global risk assets, ETH sold off with equities, and funding flipped as levered longs were cleared in hours.
8 STEPS