Nearly $52 million in leveraged bets tied to chip stocks and semiconductor funds were liquidated within 10 minutes while Wall Street was closed on Saturday, according to CoinDesk.
$51.6 million in forced liquidations hit in a 10-minute stretch
CoinGlass data showed that about $51.6 million in positions linked to chip stocks and semiconductor funds were forcibly closed between 21:22 and 21:32 UTC. Roughly $38 million of that total came from long positions.
The sell-off started on Binance and spread to Hyperliquid within seconds.
SOXL, SanDisk and SK Hynix contracts took the biggest losses
The biggest hit came from contracts tied to SOXL, the 3x long semiconductor product, with losses of about $12.7 million. Contracts linked to SanDisk and SK Hynix each recorded about $10.8 million in losses.
Tread.fi CEO described how the orders moved across venues
David Jeong, chief executive of trading firm Tread.fi, said in his reconstruction of the event that he placed the first large SanDisk and Micron sell orders on Binance at 21:21:59 UTC. Less than a second later, those orders hit Hyperliquid. The platform lists stock-tracking contracts launched by Trade XYZ, and about 10 addresses built short positions across six chip-related contracts within 1.8 seconds.
In the first minute, Binance processed about $21.9 million in SanDisk trading volume, while Trade XYZ handled $3.1 million.
No live stock reference while U.S. markets were closed
The report said memory-chip stocks had already gone through a volatile week because of new competition from Chinese chipmaker CXMT. With equity markets closed, traders in these contracts had no live stock prices to reference and were effectively trading against one another. Under Trade XYZ rules, the platform can set its own reference prices until outside stock quotes resume, with pricing expected to realign when U.S. markets open on Monday.