Crypto Liquidations Top $1.5 Billion as Binance Freezes $3 Billion

Crypto liquidations exceeded $1.5 billion in rolling 24-hour snapshots late Thursday as Binance said about $3 billion in affected assets had been frozen on-chain after a security incident.

Late-Thursday snapshots ranged from $1.51 billion to $1.55 billion as observation times changed. Each figure covers a rolling 24-hour window, making them separate snapshots rather than one fixed daily total. Liquidations are forced closures of leveraged positions when collateral no longer meets margin requirements. The totals show market stress but do not establish that Binance's incident caused each closure.

Binance's update, posted at 10:23 p.m. ET Oct. 29 (02:23 UTC Oct. 30), put the incident's preliminary estimated impact at about $6.3 billion. That is not a confirmed loss total. Binance's initial review suggested a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop may have enabled an attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals. The exchange said it found no evidence of a wallet private-key leak.

Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals during security checks and said it would cover all losses with its Secure Asset Fund for Users and company funds. It has not provided a final loss accounting or confirmed how much, if any, was stolen.