Chip-Linked Contracts Log $51.6 Million in Liquidations Over 10 Minutes

Leveraged positions tied to chip stocks and semiconductor funds saw $51.6 million liquidated in 10 minutes Saturday, as sell orders moved from Binance to Hyperliquid during the U.S. market closure.

About $38 million of the liquidations came from long positions. The forced closures took place between 5:22 and 5:32 p.m. ET on Oct. 17 (21:22–21:32 UTC). SOXL-linked contracts had the largest liquidation total, at about $12.7 million. SanDisk and SK Hynix contracts each recorded about $10.8 million.

Large SanDisk and Micron sell orders appeared on Binance at 5:21:59 p.m. ET (21:21:59 UTC). Selling appeared on Hyperliquid less than a second later. Within 1.8 seconds, about 10 addresses had opened short positions across six chip-related contracts.

During the first minute, Binance recorded about $21.9 million in SanDisk trades, compared with $3.1 million on Trade XYZ, which lists stock-tracking contracts on Hyperliquid. With U.S. stock markets closed, live share quotes were unavailable to anchor the contracts. Trade XYZ’s rules let the platform set reference prices until external stock quotes return at Monday’s U.S. market open.

Memory-chip stocks had already experienced a volatile week amid competition from China’s CXMT.