Just caught wind of a pretty brutal crypto liquidation cascade that went down earlier this week. A single $61.5 million BTC-USDT position got wiped out on HTX alone, which was actually the biggest single liquidation hit in 24 hours. But here's the thing - that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Bitcoin tanked from $68,600 on Saturday straight down to $64,300 by Monday, and that's when things got messy. Roughly $468 million in total crypto liquidation across the board, with about 93% of that coming from long positions. Basically traders were still betting on upside going into the week and got absolutely flushed when the bids disappeared. Bitcoin futures alone saw over $213 million liquidated, with Ethereum at $114 million and Solana hitting $20 million.

What really stood out was the Crypto Fear and Greed Index tanking to 5 out of 100 - that's 'extreme fear' territory. Only happened a handful of times since 2018. Meanwhile Glassnode's showing that short-term holders are still capitulating hard, losing around $500 million per day on average. Bitcoin's now sitting 48% below its October peak and keeps testing that $69,000 level like it's become a floor.

The pattern is pretty clear at this point - traders keep reloading longs into every bounce, market keeps punishing them for it, and the crypto liquidation cycle just repeats. You see a brief rally, boom, another wave of forced closures. Rinse and repeat.