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. Colour tops out at the busiest 0.5% of the map so one dominant cluster cannot drag everything else to the floor; the most crowded spot holds $41.3M. 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 position life. Hover any point for the value band it sits in.

Hourly candles to 17:00 UTC, refreshed every 2 hours and drawn here in 4-hour steps. The dashed line is the live mark, $62,885, from a snapshot 5 minutes old. Two different ages, so neither is allowed to stand for the other.

$1.49Bmodelled notional price traded through inside this window

44.15%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 or assumed
1	Total notional modelled	Equal to current open interest, $2.72B	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	Positions before the window opens	84 bars before the chart starts are modelled off-screen, so the first drawn column already holds a full position-life window of positions	assumed
8	Drawn price range	The traded range was quieter than the ±8% minimum, so the minimum set the axis — not the traded range. 44.15% 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 minimum of ±8% stops a very quiet window from zooming into noise, and in a quiet window it is that minimum 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 liquidation, % from mark
2×	9.00%	$244.84M	−49.4%
5×	19.00%	$516.88M	−19.0%
10×	27.00%	$734.51M	−8.9%
20×	22.00%	$598.49M	−3.8%
25×	15.00%	$408.06M	−2.8%
40×	8.00%	$217.63M	−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 — $281.39M 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
$61,399	-2.80%	longs	$39.33M	1.45%
$61,042	-3.37%	longs	$29.96M	1.10%
$65,827	+4.21%	shorts	$29.39M	1.08%
$68,970	+9.18%	shorts	$29.24M	1.07%
$65,542	+3.76%	shorts	$27.42M	1.01%
$65,899	+4.32%	shorts	$26.79M	0.98%
$68,613	+8.62%	shorts	$25.98M	0.96%
$66,184	+4.78%	shorts	$25.43M	0.93%
$69,327	+9.75%	shorts	$24.32M	0.89%
$69,041	+9.30%	shorts	$23.52M	0.86%

How far price can move before each leverage liquidates — 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 down	Short liquidation	Move up	Corridor width
40× · max	2.50%	$62,088.99	−1.27%	$63,661.36	+1.23%	2.50%
30×	3.33%	$61,558.31	−2.11%	$64,178.93	+2.06%	4.17%
24×	4.17%	$61,027.64	−2.95%	$64,696.50	+2.88%	5.83%
20×	5.00%	$60,496.96	−3.80%	$65,214.07	+3.70%	7.50%
16×	6.25%	$59,700.95	−5.06%	$65,990.43	+4.94%	10.00%
12×	8.33%	$58,374.26	−7.17%	$67,284.36	+7.00%	14.17%
10×	10.00%	$57,312.91	−8.86%	$68,319.51	+8.64%	17.50%

Where BTC's margin tiers step 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 → · BTC funding and margin tiers →