Ethereum short liquidations at highest level since 2022

The Ethereum price is facing rough conditions. After a sharp decline from about $3.200 to $1.500 in recent months, short liquidations on Binance have now reached their highest level in four years. That is shown by analyst Darkfost using data from CryptoQuant.

Ethereum is available at OKX and Bybit.

Open interest plummets from record high

At the end of October 2025, open interest on the ETH futures market stood at a record level of $33.9 billion. Since then, that figure has fallen sharply to just $11.2 billion at present. That is a decline of nearly 67%, which shows how severely the correction has hit traders who are using too much leverage.

Darkfost points out that the liquidations on Binance are clearly visible in a so-called bubble chart, where each bubble represents the size of a liquidation wave. This allows you to see at a glance whether long or short positions are losing out. Notably, the size of the long liquidations at the end of June is comparable to that of October 10, which was already a turbulent period for the market.

Short squeeze drives liquidation volumes higher in July

With a small price recovery at the start of July, the picture reverses. Traders who were betting on a further decline in ETH are now being liquidated themselves. Especially on July 2, short liquidation volume dominates on Binance, and on a scale not seen since 2022. The current ETH price stands at $1.770.

According to Darkfost, this pattern tells a clear story: traders are getting impatient in a market that is barely moving. To still generate returns in a low-volatility environment, they pile on leverage. That often backfires, as the recent waves of liquidations also show. Earlier, analysts had already warned of similar risks with rising leverage levels in the crypto market. The situation surrounding Ethereum shows that this risk also applies outside of Bitcoin.