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ETH Leads Record Liquidations

Olivia Capozzalo & Denis Omelchenko
September 22, 2025

gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

  • Crypto markets plunged today, with $1.6 billion in long liquidations, over $500 million of which were ETH positions.

In other news:

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📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

TICKERVALUE24H
BitcoinBitcoin$112,682
-2.34 %
EthereumEthereum$4,167.87
-6.94 %
XRPXRP$2.85
-3.99 %
BNBBNB$993.76
-4.74 %
SolanaSolana$219.9
-7.23 %

Today’s Big Story

Crypto Markets in the Red After Altcoin Index Touches 2018 Highs

The cryptocurrency market plunged on Monday, slipping below the $4 trillion mark and wiping out the week’s gains as Bitcoin (BTC) fell under $113,000.

BTC is trading around $112,370 at the time of writing, down 2.7% on the day, while Ethereum (ETH) is showing even bigger losses, shedding 7% to trade below $4,200, a sharp selloff from the $4,500 level held for all of last week.

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ETH 7-day price chart. Source: CoinGecko

All the top 30 tokens by market capitalization are solidly in the red on the day, with most large-caps losing over 7% in the past 24 hours. Dogecoin (DOGE) is showing the biggest losses in the group, down 9% just days after the REX-Osprey DOGE ETF debut.

The downturn follows a sharp reversal in the altcoin index, which on Saturday, Sep. 20, shortly reached 100, an extreme maximum that was last seen in February 2018, before collapsing to 65 as of today, per Coinglass.

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Liquidation Spike

Liquidations have also spiked as prices plunged, with $1.7 billion in leveraged positions wiped out over the past 24 hours — the vast majority of which were longs — marking the largest long liquidation event this year, per Coinglass data.

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Total crypto liquidations. Source: Coinglass

ETH positions led 24-hour liquidations, with over $516 million, followed by BTC at nearly $292 million.

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24-hour liquidations. Source: Coinglass

As for ETFs, spot Ethereum ETFs saw $556 million in inflows last week, bringing total net assets to $29.6 billion, per SoSoValue data. Over the same timeframe, spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $886.6 million in inflows with total net assets standing at $152.31 billion.

Last week, the Fed cut interest rates by 25 bps to a target range between 4-4.25%, while also signaling two more possible cuts this year. That long-awaited cut at first positively affected altcoins, which rallied over the weekend.

Sentiment Shift

However, crypto markets lost all their momentum on Monday, shortly after the defunct crypto exchange FTX said it will begin its third distribution on Sept. 30, returning approximately $1.6 billion to holders of allowed claims as part of its Chapter 11 restructuring.

Analysts at Santiment noted in a Sunday report that more traders are now “betting that the price of Bitcoin will go down, as opposed to betting that Bitcoin’s price will go up,” adding that they began to see a “much more negative narrative forming across social media.”

Denis Omelchenko, staff reporter at The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

$100 Million DeFi DAT Chooses ETH | Ryan Zurrer

On the latest episode of The Defiant Podcast, Vinny sat down with crypto pioneer Ryan Zurrer to explore the strategy behind Game Square, the Jerry Jones-backed media powerhouse that bet $100 million on Ethereum instead of Bitcoin.

Ryan, who co-wrote the MakerDAO whitepaper and now leads Dialectic, shares why Ethereum dominates 5 out of 6 real-world crypto use cases, from stablecoins to DeFi, and how it’s emerging as the financial substrate of the future. The conversation dives deep into the evolution of DeFi, the lessons learned from past crypto cycles, and the importance of decentralization and fair launches in building sustainable ecosystems.

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