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 $22.9M. 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, $1,875, from a snapshot 0 minutes old. Two different ages, so neither is allowed to stand for the other.

$1.31Bmodelled notional price traded through inside this window

47.05%of modelled notional sits outside the drawn price range

$1,803 – $1,981the 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, $1.67B	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	2.000% 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. 47.05% 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%	$150.13M	−49.0%
5×	19.00%	$316.94M	−18.4%
10×	27.00%	$450.39M	−8.2%
20×	22.00%	$366.99M	−3.1%
25×	15.00%	$250.22M	−2.0%

Where the model puts the biggest clusters

Price levels still carrying modelled notional at the right-hand edge of the chart, largest first — $173.31M 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
$1,831	-2.82%	longs	$20.37M	1.22%
$1,735	-7.91%	longs	$18.60M	1.12%
$2,038	+8.15%	shorts	$18.60M	1.12%
$1,927	+2.27%	shorts	$18.25M	1.09%
$1,944	+3.17%	shorts	$17.65M	1.06%
$1,827	-3.05%	longs	$16.92M	1.01%
$1,940	+2.94%	shorts	$16.18M	0.97%
$2,019	+7.13%	shorts	$15.69M	0.94%
$1,833	-2.71%	longs	$15.53M	0.93%
$2,032	+7.81%	shorts	$15.52M	0.93%

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
25× · max	4.00%	$1,837.03	−2.04%	$1,912.07	+1.96%	4.00%
19×	5.26%	$1,812.86	−3.33%	$1,935.29	+3.20%	6.53%
15×	6.67%	$1,786.00	−4.76%	$1,961.10	+4.58%	9.34%
13×	7.69%	$1,766.37	−5.81%	$1,979.95	+5.58%	11.39%
10×	10.00%	$1,722.21	−8.16%	$2,022.38	+7.84%	16.01%
8×	12.50%	$1,674.38	−10.71%	$2,068.35	+10.29%	21.01%
6×	16.67%	$1,594.64	−14.97%	$2,144.95	+14.38%	29.35%

Where ETH's margin tiers step down

Maintenance margin is set by the tier the notional falls in. Above $100.00M the corridor widens, because maintenance margin rises to 3.333%.

Tier	Notional from	Max leverage	Maintenance margin
1 · charted	$0	25×	2.000%
2	$100.00M	15×	3.333%

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 → · ETH funding and margin tiers →