Shorts Dominate, but Liquidation Is Far Away — Where Do Top Traders' Liquidation Prices Sit?
Columns · · Satoshi Note Editorial
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BTC short liquidation prices sit 1.6% above the current price in one case and 78% above in another. The spread inside a single side is that wide.
At 17:33 KST on October 29, BTC traded at $80,029.5.
The Satoshi Note liquidation map showed about $924M of short liquidation prices and about $51M of long ones for BTC at that moment.
Shorts outweighed longs by roughly 18 to 1.
Yet most of those shorts have liquidation prices far from where BTC trades now.
The nearest short liquidates at $81,312, 1.6% above the current price. The largest short liquidates 78% above it.
Does "many shorts" mean "liquidation is near"?
The map does not show how large positions are. It shows how far away their liquidation prices are, and those are two numbers to read separately.
1. How a liquidation price is set
A liquidation price is where an exchange force-closes a position. Think of it as the point where margin runs out.
For the same size, higher leverage puts it close to the entry price and lower leverage puts it far away.
Satoshi Note does not back-calculate this value. It uses the liquidation price each exchange publishes for each position.
So every bar on the map is at least one real position.
2. How much BTC liquidation sits nearby
Start from the current price and work outward.
| Distance from current price | Longs (accounts · amount) | Shorts (accounts · amount) |
|---|---|---|
| Within ±2% | 0 · $0 | 1 · $4.3M |
| Within ±5% | 1 · $13.2M | 4 · $12.0M |
| Within ±10% | 4 · $13.5M | 9 · $26.0M |
Distance is the gap between the current price and the liquidation price. Each row is cumulative.
The $13.2M of longs inside ±5% is a single position: a 50x long on Lighter with a liquidation price of $77,055.
Inside ±10%, shorts total $26.0M, but that is under 3% of the roughly $924M of shorts overall.
The amount sitting close is smaller than you might expect.
3. The bigger the money, the farther the liquidation price
Of the roughly $924M of BTC shorts, 79 positions worth about $656M have liquidation prices more than 50% above the current price.
The three largest shorts show why.
| Position | Size | Leverage | Distance to liquidation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperliquid short | about $210M | 5x | 78.0% |
| Hyperliquid short | about $201M | 5x | 70.6% |
| Hyperliquid short | about $101M | 25x | 15.5% |
Large positions tend to use low leverage, which keeps their liquidation prices far away.
This table cannot tell us why those accounts built them that way. They may hold ample collateral or hold spot alongside.
4. ZEC at the same moment
Our ZEC column covered how the top 24-hour traders' ZEC positions flipped from 99% long to 99% short.
On the liquidation map at the same time, ZEC trades at $1,245.95. Of 71 positions with known liquidation prices, shorts total about $224M and longs under $0.5M.
Only 3 shorts, worth $2.9M, have liquidation prices within ±50% of the current price. The other 64, about $221M, sit more than 50% above it.
The nearest short liquidates at $1,659.66, 33.2% above the current price. The largest short is 3x leveraged, with a liquidation price above three times the current price.
A dominant short does not mean liquidation is bunched up just above the price. At this moment in ZEC, almost none is nearby.
The two columns show different short totals because the bases differ. The ZEC column used top 24-hour accounts. This column uses top 7-day accounts and only positions whose liquidation price is known.
5. What to separate when reading this screen
Three checks reduce misreadings.
First, whose positions are these? Not the whole market, but the public positions of top accounts in the Satoshi Index.
Second, what is missing? For BTC, 87 of 236 holdings are left out because the liquidation price is unknown. dYdX does not publish liquidation prices, and 63 of those holdings come from it.
Third, as of when? Positions are a 30-minute snapshot. Adding margin moves a liquidation price, and the screen has no time axis.
None of this makes the map meaningless. It shows plainly how much sits near the price and how much sits far away.
It does not tell you where price will move.
Closing: look at distance before amount
On the afternoon of October 29, BTC shorts totaled about $924M.
Only $26.0M of that was inside ±10%, and $656M was more than 50% away.
ZEC shorts were overwhelming, yet almost none had a liquidation price nearby.
This record cannot show whether liquidations will actually happen, or at what price.
What matters on a liquidation map is not how large the shorts are, but how far their liquidation prices sit from where price trades today.
Check it yourself in the Satoshi Note liquidation map
The liquidation map shows the liquidation prices exchanges publish for positions held by the top 100 or 200 accounts on Hyperliquid, Lighter and Pacifica, by price band.
You can choose a range of ±5, 10, 25 or 50%. It is currently in beta.
Data basis: positions as of 15:31 KST on October 29, 2026; BTC and ZEC prices as of 17:33 KST the same day (Hyperliquid mid price). Based on the top 100 accounts by 7-day return, summing only positions with a published liquidation price. This content is market data analysis, not investment advice.