I noticed an interesting pattern in the market — just recently, there was a wave of large liquidations totaling over half a billion dollars. Meanwhile, the BTC price strangely hovered around the psychological mark of $70 000. It turns out, it’s all due to the expiration of options on Deribit.

On Friday, a series of contracts for March expired — about 24,838 contracts with a total value of nearly $1.7 billion. And here’s the interesting part: the BTC price exactly hit the maximum pain point, where institutional makers get the maximum profit. This is not a coincidence, but rather a market pattern. Traders spent the whole day waiting for the price to break out of the $69–71 thousand range.

But the liquidations themselves turned out to be sad. Over 24 hours, 141,000 positions were wiped out, with losses totaling $541 million. Of these, $443 million were losses for long traders betting on a rise. Short positions lost only $97 million. BTC liquidations amounted to $191 million, and Ether added another $165 million. There was one ETH position worth $18 million — just wiped out in one move.

Open interest in futures fell by 5.6% to $107 billion. Ethereum futures decreased by 9%, even though spot prices only dropped 6% — indicating capital outflow rather than just a price correction. Funding rates for BTC, ETH, Solana, and BNB turned negative, hinting at growing demand for shorts. Meanwhile, large wallets quietly started accumulating — such is the paradox amid all this chaos with BTC liquidations and overall volatility.