Crypto Liquidations Crossed $500 Million as Bitcoin Retreated From $100,000

Cryptocurrency derivatives liquidations reached $500.45 million across 197,551 traders during the rolling 24 hours ending at 19:30 UTC on November 24, 2024, according to a contemporaneous CoinGlass snapshot reported by The Block. Long liquidations accounted for approximately $380 million and short liquidations for approximately $120 million as bitcoin retreated from its approach to $100,000.

The event mattered because leverage was being removed even though bitcoin did not finish the UTC date with a large loss. It was a sharp intraday stress episode inside a still-elevated post-election market, not a completed collapse of the broader rally.

A failed push produced a volatile session

At 19:30 UTC, The Block recorded bitcoin at $96,256, down 1.4% over its preceding 24-hour window. The publication said bitcoin-related contracts represented $70.4 million of the liquidation total, followed by ether at $43.4 million and dogecoin at $35.3 million. Those asset figures describe derivatives positions closed across the venues tracked by CoinGlass; they are not spot sales and should not be added to market-capitalization losses.

A separate daily series from StatMuse shows why the cutoff matters. Its aggregated BTC price record for the November 24 UTC date opened at $97,778.10, reached $98,647.18, fell to $95,788.08 and closed at $98,013.82. Coinburn calculates a 2.90% decline from that session high to its low, followed by a recovery that left the close 0.24% above the open.

The same series placed the November 22 high at $99,655.50. The drop from that observation to the November 24 low was 3.88%, a Coinburn calculation using the two aggregator values. It measures a retreat from the attempted six-figure threshold, not a universal loss for every trader or exchange.

What the liquidation figure measured

A liquidation occurs when a trading venue closes a leveraged position after its collateral no longer satisfies maintenance requirements. Falling prices tend to force long positions closed; rising prices tend to force shorts closed. The presence of approximately $120 million in short liquidations alongside the larger long total is consistent with a market that moved in both directions during the measurement window.

The $500.45 million figure was a rolling snapshot, not an audited calendar-day total. CoinGlass aggregates reported exchange activity, and its coverage, venue reporting practices, latency and treatment of partial liquidations can affect the result. The trader count likewise should not be interpreted as 197,551 unique people: one participant can maintain accounts or positions on multiple venues, and the surviving report does not document a cross-exchange identity reconciliation.

Coinbase’s official candle documentation supplies another methodological warning for historical crypto prices. Its exchange candles are venue-specific grouped buckets, and Coinbase says historical rates can be incomplete where no ticks occur. That primary record explains why even exchange-originated open, high, low and close data must travel with the named product, venue and time bucket. StatMuse does not identify a single execution venue beside its table, so its values are used as an aggregated reference rather than a Coinbase close.

Weekend structure shaped the record

November 24, 2024 was a Sunday. Bitcoin spot and offshore derivatives markets continued trading, while U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds and conventional equity markets were closed. The liquidation wave therefore unfolded without same-session creations, redemptions or price discovery in those listed products. That does not prove weekend liquidity caused the move, but it limits claims about institutional participation.

The strict event-day conclusion is narrow. Bitcoin’s rejection below $100,000 coincided with more than half a billion dollars of estimated leveraged-position closures during a defined rolling window, yet the aggregated UTC price series recovered to a slightly positive daily close. The record establishes substantial two-way volatility and leverage stress. It does not establish a durable market top, a single cause for the retreat or a complete accounting of global losses.