"$84M IN CRYPTO LONGS JUST GOT WIPED OUT IN THE PAST HOUR," the trading YouTuber That Martini Guy posted to 705,000 followers on August 23, as bitcoin dipped below $76,000 on its way to $81,000 two days later, capping a week in which it surged roughly 25%. "This is what leverage does. The move down forces longs to sell, which creates more selling pressure, which triggers more liquidations. And suddenly a small move becomes a much bigger one."
"This marks Kalshi's evolution from prediction market leader to next-gen derivatives exchange," said Tarek Mansour, the chief executive of prediction market Kalshi, when the CFTC approved its spot bitcoin perpetual futures contract in late May, rewiring the market those wipeouts now hit. "Onshore, safe, and regulated perps will improve capital allocation and risk management for countless American businesses."
Offshore perpetuals had grown "from $28 trillion in annual volume in 2023 to over $90 trillion in 2025," Kalshi's launch post noted, an asset class "entirely closed off to American institutions until now." The live contracts cleared $5.5 billion in their first two weeks after a June 3 debut, Bloomberg reported.
'One Of The Most Dangerous Crypto Products' The CFTC waved the contract through "despite perpetual futures being one of the most dangerous crypto products for retail investors," Benjamin Schiffrin, the director of securities policy at Better Markets, said the day of the approval. "And it did so without establishing any enhanced investor protections." "Leverage traders just got punished," the aggregator CT News posted on August 22, counting $529 million liquidated in a single hour, $478 million of it longs, as bitcoin slipped toward $77,000. "BTC led another brutal flush."
"THE BITCOIN LIQUIDATION MAP IS SCREAMING: 'THE DUMP IS COMING'," the analyst Qmo posted on August 24, mapping the kind of cascade that decides who pays for a crash. "The $3.3B short squeeze cleared most short liquidity above $80K. But massive long liquidation pools are stacked at $62K-$67K. If $82K resistance holds, BTC could sweep that liquidity next." "Something did shift here. $2.7-3.5 billion in short positions got liquidated in 24 hours, one of the biggest liquidation events on record," the trader Money Bunny told 280,000 followers. "I wouldn't call $80K guaranteed this week though." Still: "Both things can be true at once. Bears just got genuinely destroyed, and the higher timeframe risk isn't gone."
'Options Can Go To Zero' "People shouldn’t be trading options or leverage in the start until they do get more experience," Charan Dangeti, a creator who works with paper trading app GameStock, said in an interview, warning that beginners rarely grasp that "options can go to zero." His advice holds even inside a simulator: "I think you should also have some sort of risk management strategy there." "They don't want to put their capital into a traditional centralized broker. They appreciate the flexibility and the ease of capital movement, the self-custody aspect, the transparency and the traceability aspect that they get from being on-chain," Kaledora Kiernan-Linn, the co-founder of onchain perpetuals platform Ostium, said on the On The Margin podcast of the whales who may never bring their leverage onshore. Perps are already Kalshi's "fastest-growing launch ever," Mansour told a Bloomberg conference, with talks underway to extend them beyond crypto, Treasury bond buybacks expanding from September 9 and SEC crypto fundraising comments closing October 20. Schiffrin's warning stands either way: leverage "allows retail investors to own positions worth far more than the capital they invest, which can lead to sudden and severe liquidations."