Between 21:22 and 21:32 UTC on Saturday, October 18, 2026, approximately $51.6 million in leveraged positions on semiconductor perpetual futures contracts were forcibly liquidated. The flash selloff concluded within a ten-minute window while US stock exchanges were closed for the weekend.
Traders holding long positions bore the brunt of the wipeout. Roughly $38 million of the total liquidations came from long positions, with the remainder hitting short positions. SOXL, a triple-leveraged ETF tracking the semiconductor sector, suffered the largest loss at approximately $12.7 million. Two other contracts followed close behind: SanDisk and SK Hynix, each shedding around $10.8 million.
What made this selloff unusual was not only its scale, but the complete absence of open physical stock markets as the event unfolded.
Rapid-Fire Orders on Binance and Hyperliquid
The selling pressure originated on Binance. David Jeong, CEO of analytics platform Tread.fi, identified that large sell orders for SanDisk and Micron first entered Binance at precisely 21:21:59 UTC. Less than a second after those orders appeared, similar orders hit the Trade XYZ platform on Hyperliquid.
On Hyperliquid, approximately 10 wallet addresses opened short positions across six chip-related contracts within a span of 1.8 seconds. The lightning-fast execution from this group of wallets immediately drained available liquidity on the platform.
Binance processed the largest volume during the first minute. The crypto exchange logged roughly $21.9 million in SanDisk volume within the opening 60 seconds, compared to $3.1 million posted by Trade XYZ over the same period.
The Dangers of Trading Without Real Market Benchmarks
The absence of regular exchanges opened a hazardous vulnerability in weekend equity perpetual futures trading. Because US stock markets were closed, there was no real reference price. Without a benchmark from Wall Street, the Trade XYZ platform established its own reference prices.
As a result, traders were merely reacting to each other’s moves on the crypto derivatives exchange rather than responding to real-world stock valuations. When large sell orders hit and triggered cascading liquidations, there was no external price anchor to arrest the collapse of these synthetic contracts.
Semiconductor sector sentiment was already strained heading into the weekend due to competitive concerns surrounding Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT. However, pressure that had played out gradually in regular markets turned into a flash liquidation when transferred to high-leverage perpetual instruments.
Awaiting the Reality Check at Monday’s Wall Street Open
Actual stock prices can only be verified once Wall Street reopens on Monday. Until the physical market opens, market participants cannot be certain whether the drop reflects genuine industry valuations or purely localized panic among crypto traders.
For weekend leveraged traders, this ten-minute episode offers a concrete warning: thin liquidity without an official price benchmark can wipe out tens of millions of dollars in capital in an instant.
Reported by CoinDesk.
Also read: How to Read Candlestick Charts for Beginners
Also read: $803 Million in Leveraged Bets Wiped Out in a Day - SanDisk Token Liquidations Surpass XRP
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
