Crypto-traded perpetual futures tied to chip stocks and semiconductor funds plunged on Saturday while Wall Street was closed, triggering about $51.6 million in liquidations in a 10-minute stretch.
CoinGlass data showed that positions linked to chip stocks and semiconductor funds were force-closed between 21:22 and 21:32 UTC. About $38 million of that total came from traders who had been betting on higher prices.
No cash-market anchor during the weekend
The positions were held through perpetual futures, contracts that track a stock’s price and trade around the clock on crypto exchanges. That structure lets traders buy and sell chip-linked exposure even on a Saturday night.
But with U.S. stock markets shut for the weekend, there was no live share price to anchor those contracts. Weekend pricing was driven by crypto traders themselves rather than by actual stock trading. A benchmark returns when U.S. markets reopen on Monday, which will show how far Saturday’s prices moved away from where the shares actually trade.
In leveraged trading, a position is automatically closed when losses consume the trader’s posted collateral. That forced selling can push prices lower and trigger the next round of liquidations.
SOXL, SanDisk and SK Hynix took the biggest hit
SOXL posted the largest liquidation total at about $12.7 million. The fund is designed to deliver triple the daily move in chip shares.
SanDisk and SK Hynix contracts followed, with about $10.8 million in liquidations each.
Jeong said the move started on Binance
According to David Jeong, chief executive of trading firm Tread.fi, a review of the trades showed the selling began on Binance. He said the first large SanDisk and Micron sell orders on Binance appeared at 21:21:59 UTC.
Less than a second later, orders hit Hyperliquid, where Trade XYZ lists stock-tracking contracts. Roughly 10 addresses opened bearish positions across six chip-linked contracts within 1.8 seconds.
In the first minute of the move, Binance handled about $21.9 million of SanDisk trading, compared with about $3.1 million on Trade XYZ.
Chip names had already been under pressure
Memory-chip shares had already come off a difficult week as investors weighed new competition from Chinese chipmaker CXMT.
With the stock market closed, traders in these contracts were reacting only to one another. Under Trade XYZ’s rules, trading on the platform can set its own reference prices until outside stock quotes return.
Those outside quotes come back when U.S. markets open on Monday. That will provide the first direct comparison between Saturday’s crypto-market pricing and the levels where the underlying shares actually trade.