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More than $1.6 billion in leveraged crypto bets were force-closed on Nov. 13 as bitcoin hit a 12-week low near $68,781.99 (CoinDesk; price from Yahoo Finance, Nov. 13). CoinDesk reported the total only. The data I have doesn’t split it into longs and shorts, doesn’t give bitcoin’s share and doesn’t give the exact time window. The push came from a dollar at a 19-month high, as CoinDesk described it, and the next test CoinDesk flags is a slide back below $60,000. If you own bitcoin outright or through a spot ETF, none of this can force you to sell, because only borrowed money gets liquidated.
If you trade with leverage, a bitcoin liquidation heatmap shows roughly where your position becomes someone else’s exit. I don’t have a timestamped CoinGlass map reading for this piece. The price levels below come from the standard liquidation formula, not from reading the map.
Key takeaways
- Liquidations topped $1.6 billion as bitcoin fell to a 12-week low on Nov. 13 (CoinDesk).
- A 10x long opened at $68,781.99 is wiped out near $61,904, just 10% lower (Starman calculation from Yahoo Finance price, before fees).
- A 10x long opened a month ago had a 10% cushion, and bitcoin fell 15.67% over that month (Yahoo Finance): that $1,000 of margin is gone.
- On Nov. 13 the dollar index stood at 103.3, which CoinDesk called a 19-month high, and the 10-year Treasury yield was 5.13% (Yahoo Finance).
How to read the colors on a liquidation heatmap
A liquidation heatmap puts price on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal. Each price level is shaded by how much leveraged money would be force-closed if bitcoin traded there. Dark areas mean very little. Bright yellow bands mean a large pile of estimated liquidations sits at that level.
Those bands are estimates. They are not real orders. No exchange publishes every trader’s liquidation price, so heatmap sites such as CoinGlass build a model from open interest (the total value of futures contracts still open), recent entry prices and the leverage people usually pick, like 10x, 25x, 50x or 100x.
Why does bitcoin’s price drift toward the bright bands?
When an exchange liquidates a long, it sells that position at market. The selling pushes price lower, and that can trip the next band below. Traders call this a liquidation cascade. It works the same way going up in a short squeeze: short sellers get wiped out, their forced buying lifts price, and the rally runs into the next cluster above.
Thin order books near a large cluster make a sweep cheaper to trigger. Price often wicks into a band, clears it and bounces.
I treat a bright band as a place where volatility is likely. I don’t treat it as a direction signal.
Long liquidations sit below, short liquidations above
Longs lose money when price falls, so their liquidation levels sit below the current price. Shorts sit above. A hard flush like this week’s tends to burn off the bands underneath. That leaves the bigger clusters overhead, which is why relief rallies after a wipeout are often fast and short-lived.
Why did $1.6 billion in crypto bets get liquidated?
The first push came from the macro side. CoinDesk reported that bitcoin hit a 12-week low as the dollar rallied on the interest-rate outlook. The US dollar index stood at 103.3 in Yahoo Finance data for Nov. 13, up 3.34% in three months, and CoinDesk called it a 19-month high.
How rates and the dollar drain crypto liquidity
The trouble starts with inflation. October wholesale prices rose 6.5% from a year earlier, which CNBC reported as the highest in nearly four years (CNBC). Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said the central bank “has definitely got work to do” on inflation.
Traders now expect a tighter Fed, and you can follow those odds in our December rate hike tracker. That expectation lifted the 10-year Treasury yield to 5.13% (Yahoo Finance, Nov. 13), well above the effective fed funds rate of 3.88% (New York Fed, Nov. 12).
A 5.13% yield on a government bond is real competition for a coin that pays nothing. A stronger dollar also tightens liquidity, meaning the pool of cheap money that flows into speculative assets. When that pool shrinks, leveraged positions in risk assets are the first to go. Investors in a risk-off mood (selling risky assets for safe ones) cut whatever is volatile and park the money in cash and bonds.
How leverage turned a slide into a flush
Bitcoin fell 3.59% on the day and 15.67% over the month (Yahoo Finance). For bitcoin, a 3.59% day is ordinary. The violence came from where price landed.
CoinDesk’s live coverage headline reported bitcoin dropping below its 200-week moving average, and the price also broke under $70,000. Long-term trend lines and round numbers are where stops and liquidation levels tend to bunch together.
If you missed the first leg, our report on bitcoin’s first break below $70,000 covers how it began.
How to read a bitcoin liquidation heatmap step by step
- Pick the timeframe. A 24-hour map shows clusters built by short-term traders. A one-month or three-month map shows older positions that are still open, often with lower leverage.
- Find the current price line. Then look for the brightest band above it and the brightest band below it. Those are the nearest pools of forced orders.
- Compare their size. If the band overhead is much brighter, a short squeeze is the more explosive risk. If the band underneath is brighter, a long flush is.
- Check open interest and funding. If open interest is climbing, new leverage is piling in. A positive funding rate (longs paying shorts to keep their positions open) means the crowd leans long.
- Watch what happens at the band. A fast wick that recovers means the cluster got cleared. If price closes through the band on heavy volume, the move may still have fuel.
Volume tells you how much force a band needs. Bitcoin has the deepest order books in crypto, so moving it takes a lot of forced orders. Smaller coins have thinner order books, and much smaller clusters can push them around.
Where is bitcoin’s liquidation price at 10x or 20x leverage?
For an isolated-margin long, where only the collateral you posted is at risk, the rough liquidation price is entry × (1 − 1 / leverage). Exchanges also require a maintenance margin and charge fees, so the real trigger sits a little closer to your entry than this formula suggests.
Which leverage survived bitcoin’s 15.67% monthly drop?
| Leverage | Price drop that wipes out the margin | Survived the 15.67% one-month fall? |
|---|---|---|
| None (spot) | No liquidation | Yes, down 15.67% on paper |
| 2x | About 50% | Yes, but the margin lost about 31% |
| 5x | About 20% | Barely, with about 78% of the margin gone |
| 10x | About 10% | No |
| 20x | About 5% | No |
| 50x | About 2% | No |
The table assumes a long opened 30 days ago, at the start of that 15.67% fall. A position opened today is a different trade, and the first two rows below show where it breaks. The 15.67% is also a start-to-end figure, and the drop from the month’s high was likely larger, so “survived” at 5x is a best case.
Leverage didn’t change bitcoin’s price. It shortened how far the price had to move before your money was gone.
By the numbers
- A 10x long opened at bitcoin’s Nov. 13 price of $68,781.99 (Yahoo Finance) is liquidated near $61,904, only 10% lower, before fees.
- At 20x, the same entry is liquidated near $65,343, just 5% below the entry price.
- On a 10x long opened about 30 days ago with $1,000 of margin, bitcoin’s 15.67% fall over that month (Yahoo Finance) adds up to a $1,567 paper loss, more than the deposit, so the exchange closed it out before the month ended.
- The same drop on $10,000 of bitcoin bought 30 days ago and held without leverage leaves $8,433.
How we calculated: bitcoin’s $68,781.99 price and its 15.67% one-month decline come from Yahoo Finance on Nov. 13, 2026; the first two rows assume entry at today’s price, the last two assume entry 30 days ago, and liquidation prices use the simple isolated-margin formula entry × (1 − 1/leverage), ignoring maintenance margin, fees, funding and the larger drop from the month’s high.
Bitcoin vs ether, solana and XRP: who got hit hardest?
Over 30 days, bitcoin held up better than every other coin on this list: down 16.28%, against falls of roughly 20% to 23.5%. Over 24 hours it ran the other way, and bitcoin’s 4.12% drop was the biggest in the table. The prices below were pulled at a slightly different moment from the Yahoo Finance quote, which is why bitcoin shows $68,466 here.
| Coin | Price (USD) | 24 hours | 7 days | 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTC) | 68,466 | -4.12% | -9.10% | -16.28% |
| Ether (ETH) | 1,924.21 | -3.78% | -12.73% | -20.51% |
| Solana (SOL) | 79.52 | -2.09% | -10.64% | -23.07% |
| XRP | 1.017 | -0.63% | -13.00% | -23.51% |
| Dogecoin (DOGE) | 0.064729 | -0.78% | -9.09% | -20.32% |
| Zcash (ZEC) | 936.13 | -2.13% | -27.17% | -20.76% |
Every major coin on that list fell more than bitcoin over 30 days. When money gets scared it tends to consolidate into the biggest, most liquid coin, and the 30-day column fits that pattern. A month-old 10x long on solana or XRP would have been hit even harder than the bitcoin example above, because those coins fell further.
When companies get liquidated: Nakamoto, BTCS and DeFi loans
A heatmap only tracks futures traders. Some of the most dangerous forced sellers right now are companies and on-chain loans, and none of them appear on that chart.
Crypto treasury companies under margin pressure
Ethereum treasury firm BTCS sold ether at a loss to keep a $64 million Aave loan healthy, according to CoinDesk. With ether down 20.51% in a month, the collateral behind that loan shrank and the company had to sell into a falling market. Bitcoin firm Nakamoto owes Kraken $165 million, more than its entire market value (CoinDesk), and its shares fell 6% premarket after third-quarter revenue turned negative (Cointelegraph).
How DeFi lending liquidations work
Lending protocols like Aave liquidate automatically. When your collateral falls below a set ratio, a bot repays part of your loan and takes your collateral at a discount. No human calls you first.
This matters for the heatmap because forced selling from these sources adds to whatever the futures market is doing, and you can’t see it on the chart until it hits.
Has a bitcoin liquidation cascade happened before?
Yes, and the closest example is this year’s own run. CoinDesk’s live coverage described bitcoin plunging back toward bear market lows and wiping out the late summer rally. Over three months bitcoin is still up 8.49% (Yahoo Finance), because that window starts just before the 12-week low window, when bitcoin traded below today’s price before the summer rally began. The month’s 15.67% reversal gave back the rally’s gains, and rallies built on leverage tend to do that in a few violent sessions.
Why spot buyers aren’t cushioning the fall
In a healthy market, patient spot buyers absorb forced selling. That support is weaker this time. CoinDesk reports that US bitcoin ETFs are now down more than $1.5 billion in net outflows for the year. When ETF money is leaving, liquidation cascades have fewer buyers waiting underneath.
Common mistakes traders make with liquidation heatmaps
Treating estimated bands as real orders
The bands are a model of where leverage probably sits. If traders used different leverage than the model assumes, the real cluster may sit somewhere else. Use the map to spot zones, not exact prices.
Parking your own stop inside the brightest band
This is the classic error. If your stop or liquidation level sits where thousands of others sit, you are in the exact zone the market is most likely to sweep. Liquidation levels inside a bright band are the ones most exposed to a sweep.
Forgetting what cross-margin does
With cross-margin, your whole account balance backs every position. That pushes your liquidation price further away, but a single bad trade can drain money you thought was safe. Isolated margin limits the loss to that one trade.
Reading one exchange as the whole market
Some heatmaps cover one venue only. Leverage spread across several exchanges and on-chain lending won’t all show up. Check whether the map aggregates exchanges before you trust it.
Is my spot bitcoin, crypto ETF or savings at risk?
With a spot position or a spot bitcoin ETF, nobody lent you money, so your risk is price. The table above shows how much that alone hurt this month.
Margin loans, crypto-backed loans and leveraged ETFs work differently. A leveraged product resets its exposure every day, so in a choppy market like this one it can lose more than the simple multiple suggests. If you are unsure which type you own, the fund’s prospectus will say whether it is leveraged or spot.
For cash, the 10-year Treasury yields 5.13% and the effective fed funds rate is 3.88%. Sentiment is fragile too. Our guide to the crypto fear and greed index explains how to read that mood without overreacting to it.
FAQ
Where can I see a bitcoin liquidation heatmap?
Several crypto data sites publish them free, CoinGlass being the best known. Most let you switch timeframes and choose individual exchanges or a combined view. Use the combined view when you can, because leverage is spread across venues.
Are liquidation heatmaps accurate?
They show estimates, not confirmed orders. The model assumes typical leverage levels and entry prices, so the location of a band is approximate. They are good at showing where risk is concentrated and poor at predicting the exact price where a cascade starts.
Does bitcoin’s price always move to liquidation levels?
No. Price often gets pulled toward big clusters because forced orders feed on themselves, but news, ETF flows and macro data can push it away. This week the dollar’s jump to 103.3 did the first push, and leverage made the move bigger.
How much was liquidated in the latest bitcoin drop?
CoinDesk reported liquidations across crypto topping $1.6 billion as bitcoin hit a 12-week low on Nov. 13. Bitcoin itself fell 3.59% that day to $68,781.99 (Yahoo Finance).
Can my spot bitcoin or bitcoin ETF be liquidated?
No. Liquidation only happens when borrowed money is involved. A spot holding or spot ETF loses value when price falls, but nobody can force you to sell it. Crypto-backed loans and margin accounts can be liquidated.
What leverage survived bitcoin’s 15.67% monthly drop?
For a long opened a month ago, simple math says only positions below roughly 6x survived, and a 5x long had most of its margin wiped. A 10x long needed only a 10% fall to be liquidated, and bitcoin fell 15.67% over the month (Yahoo Finance). Because that figure runs start to end and the drop from the month’s high was likely larger, treat even the 5x result as a best case.
What I’d watch next on bitcoin’s liquidation map
Start with where fresh leverage would sit. The 20x and 10x long levels from the leverage section sit roughly 5% and 10% below today’s $68,781.99 price. Shorts opened now sit on the other side, roughly 5% and 10% higher, around $72,200 and $75,700. These are formula levels, not map readings: I don’t have a dated CoinGlass snapshot, so open the 1-month aggregated map and check whether its brightest bands above and below the price line up with those zones. The bigger band is the side a cascade is more likely to run toward.
The first round number is $70,000. A clean reclaim would put bitcoin back into the zone where shorts opened during the drop, and that is where a short squeeze could start.
The second is $60,000. CoinDesk reported that bitcoin’s momentum gauge is turning red and could send prices back below $60,000. That level sits just under where a 10x long opened today gets liquidated.
On the macro side, I’m watching the dollar index at 103.3 and the 10-year yield at 5.13%. If both keep climbing into the Fed’s December meeting, leverage will keep getting squeezed.
ETF flows are the other tell. While net outflows stay above $1.5 billion for the year, cascades have fewer buyers to land on. Rising open interest is the signal that new leverage, and the next band, is building.
This is not financial advice. Do your own research before you put money anywhere, especially money you’ve borrowed.
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Sources coindesk.com · cnbc.com
This article is for information only and is not financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile; you can lose all of your money.