Liquidation map

Where liquidation levels would sit if positions were opened the way the assumptions below describe — and, the part that matters, where price has already cleared them. The dark corridor the price path carves through the field is not empty space; it is the levels the market has already taken out. This is a model, and it is labelled as one inside the picture, not only underneath it.

Modelled notional standing at a price, at a moment. Scaled against the 99.5th percentile so one dominant cluster cannot drag everything else to the floor; the peak cell is $41.8M. A band ends where price trades through it — drawn in white, both as scars on the field and as the strip beneath — or fades out in four steps as the positions behind it age past the 14-day turnover window. Hover any point for the value band it sits in.

Hourly candles to 13:00 UTC, refreshed every 2 hours and drawn here in 4-hour steps. The dashed line is the live mark, $62,633, from a snapshot 5 minutes old. Two different ages, so neither is allowed to stand for the other.

$1.45Bmodelled notional price traded through inside this window

44.57%of modelled notional sits outside the drawn price range

$62,237 – $66,918the range that actually traded in this window

This surface is a model, and the assumptions below drive it. No venue publishes the distribution of open positions by leverage and entry price, so nobody can observe this — not us, and not anyone shipping a similar picture. Change the leverage mix in the form above and the bands move: that is the honest version of being handed someone else's Model 1, 2 and 3. What is not modelled is the price path drawn over the field, and the claim the picture actually supports is a checkable one — that price traded through where the model puts levels. See it happen on 5 February 2026 →

The assumptions, in full

#	Assumption	Value used	Observed?
1	Total notional modelled	Equal to current open interest, $2.69B	observed
2	When positions were opened	Spread over the bars of the window in proportion to each bar's traded volume	observed
3	Leverage mix	Balanced — Weight spread across the range, tilted slightly to the middle. A deliberately unopinionated default.	assumed
4	Direction	Half long, half short at every leverage	assumed
5	How long a position stays open	A bounded life of 14 days, decaying in four tranches. Removed earlier if price trades through its level.	assumed
6	Maintenance margin	1.250% at tier 1, from the published table	observed
7	Book before the window opens	84 bars of warm-up are modelled off-screen, so the first drawn column already holds a full book	assumed
8	Drawn price range	The traded range was quieter than the ±8% floor, so the floor set the axis — not the traded range. 44.57% of modelled notional liquidates further away than this and is not drawn.	observed

Row 8 is the one most worth reading twice. Tying the axis to what actually traded is what gives the price path presence — the previous version spanned a third of the price to accommodate 2× levels half a market away, and flattened real movement into a squiggle. A floor of ±8% stops a very quiet window from zooming into noise, and in a quiet window it is the floor rather than the traded range that sets the axis. Either way the cost is that low-leverage levels fall off the picture. Here that is 2×, 5× and 10×.

Leverage mix used: Balanced

The exact weight vector behind the picture. Every other profile is one form submission away.

Leverage	Share of notional	Modelled notional	Long level, from mark
2×	9.00%	$241.98M	−49.4%
5×	19.00%	$510.85M	−19.0%
10×	27.00%	$725.95M	−8.9%
20×	22.00%	$591.51M	−3.8%
25×	15.00%	$403.30M	−2.8%
40×	8.00%	$215.10M	−1.3%

Where the model puts the biggest clusters

Price levels still carrying modelled notional at the right-hand edge of the chart, largest first — $265.27M across the ten listed. These are the numbers the bright bands stand for.

Price	Distance from mark	Side closed	Modelled notional	Share of open interest
$65,817	+5.04%	shorts	$31.39M	1.17%
$68,934	+10.02%	shorts	$30.20M	1.12%
$69,359	+10.70%	shorts	$29.23M	1.09%
$61,425	-1.97%	longs	$28.83M	1.07%
$61,071	-2.53%	longs	$25.64M	0.95%
$61,708	-1.51%	longs	$24.89M	0.93%
$65,959	+5.27%	shorts	$24.21M	0.90%
$66,171	+5.61%	shorts	$23.98M	0.89%
$61,354	-2.08%	longs	$23.98M	0.89%
$65,534	+4.59%	shorts	$22.93M	0.85%

The corridor each leverage permits — derived, not modelled

No assumptions here. Given the tier table and a mark these prices are arithmetic: the upper cap is where a short is closed, the lower cap where a long is closed.

Leverage	Initial margin	Long liquidation	Move	Short liquidation	Move	Corridor width
40× · max	2.50%	$61,840.18	−1.27%	$63,406.25	+1.23%	2.50%
30×	3.33%	$61,311.63	−2.11%	$63,921.74	+2.06%	4.17%
24×	4.17%	$60,783.08	−2.95%	$64,437.24	+2.88%	5.83%
20×	5.00%	$60,254.53	−3.80%	$64,952.74	+3.70%	7.50%
16×	6.25%	$59,461.71	−5.06%	$65,725.99	+4.94%	10.00%
12×	8.33%	$58,140.34	−7.17%	$67,014.73	+7.00%	14.17%
10×	10.00%	$57,083.24	−8.86%	$68,045.73	+8.64%	17.50%

Where BTC steps down

Maintenance margin is set by the tier the notional falls in. Above $150.00M the corridor widens, because maintenance margin rises to 2.500%.

Tier	Notional from	Max leverage	Maintenance margin
1 · charted	$0	40×	1.250%
2	$150.00M	20×	2.500%

What is deliberately absent

No liquidation totals and no cascade tracker. Those need an event feed, and every available one is throttled — Binance publishes at most one liquidation per symbol per second, so a sum over it understates by an unknown factor, worst exactly when the number is most quoted. The full reasoning →

The 5 February sweep, on real candles → · Leverage survival — nothing modelled → · Work out a specific position → · BTC funding →