Massive liquidations in the crypto market after the August US CPI

Scared bears, the bill for an overly cautious bet. The American CPI for August which fell at 2:30 p.m. Paris time is considered already digested by prices. Altcoins were still plunging a few hours earlier, a sign that no one had really made a decision before publication. Bitcoin and Ethereum decide otherwise. ETH climbs up to 8.3% during the session, BTC advances almost 4%. Both then give back some of their gains, but the move was enough to empty the market of its bearish positions. At the end of the evening, ETH is trading around $2,568, stable for two hours. BTC is running at $77,600, down from its afternoon highs.

Liquidations: $758 million changing sides

The CoinGlass dashboard shows $758 million in positions liquidated over the last 24 hours, including 412 million short sellers (the famous “shorts”, downward bets) compared to 346 million long sellers. Ethereum concentrates the damage: 307 million dollars liquidated, more than the 212 million for Bitcoin. The largest individual ticket came from Hyperliquid, an ETH-USD position closed for $20.3 million.

Two waves, two directions. In the morning, before the statistics, long positions were toast. The afternoon turned the mechanics around. After 2:30 p.m. more than $250 million in shorts were liquidated in a single hour, half on ETH, for nearly 100,000 accounts affected during the day. “Traders were paying to stay short in the middle of an 8% rally,” summarizes Adam McCarthy, head of research at LO:TECH, quoted by Bloomberg. An untenable position which mechanically accelerated the rise.

American CPI: on target, except for gasoline

According to figures published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, American inflation stands at +0.4% over the month and 3.4% over one year. A stable rate compared to July. The core of the index (excluding energy and food) increased by 0.3% over the month, to 2.4% over the year.

Gasoline is pulling the whole thing upwards, with a monthly increase of close to 4%. Nothing alarming on paper, and yet the market had anticipated worse. Hence the relief, then the excitement. The Fed meets on September 16. His decision remains unaltered.

A squeeze, not a rush of buyers

Neither ETH nor BTC have regained their highs. Ether remains far from its August 2025 record, around $4,950. Bitcoin, for its part, has still not returned from its January peak close to $95,000, much less its absolute record from October 2025 above $126,000. Already at the end of August, a rally of 23% in five days had caused $2.7 billion in liquidations, the biggest wave since 2021. The scenario repeats itself on a more modest scale: historic liquidations which raise prices without a single fresh dollar entering the market.

No one knows for sure which wallets were liquidated or who took the opposite position in time: public CoinGlass data does not go back that far. The counter showed $684 million at 5:30 p.m. Paris time. It fell back to around half a billion twenty minutes later according to Bloomberg, before rising again to 758 million dollars in the evening. The rolling 24-hour window continues to absorb further liquidations as the market digests the statistic. The Fed decides in five days, September 16.