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 $255K. 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, $1.30, from a snapshot 3 minutes old. Two different ages, so neither is allowed to stand for the other.

$1.6Mmodelled notional price traded through inside this window

51.10%of modelled notional sits outside the drawn price range

$1.30 – $1.68the 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, $5.56M	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	10.000% 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	Fitted to the traded range, $1.30–$1.68, plus headroom. 51.10% 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× and 5×.

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%	$500,154	−44.4%
5×	19.00%	$1.06M	−11.1%

Where the model puts the biggest clusters

Price levels still carrying modelled notional at the right-hand edge of the chart, largest first — $1.10M 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
$1.46	+12.03%	shorts	$164,578	2.96%
$1.47	+12.73%	shorts	$163,379	2.94%
$1.48	+13.42%	shorts	$138,980	2.50%
$1.48	+12.96%	shorts	$102,048	1.84%
$1.48	+13.19%	shorts	$94,425	1.70%
$1.42	+9.01%	shorts	$91,871	1.65%
$1.46	+11.57%	shorts	$88,409	1.59%
$1.47	+12.50%	shorts	$87,252	1.57%
$1.43	+9.71%	shorts	$83,299	1.50%
$1.53	+16.91%	shorts	$82,019	1.48%

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
5× · max	20.00%	$1.158	−11.11%	$1.421	+9.09%	20.20%
4×	25.00%	$1.085	−16.67%	$1.480	+13.64%	30.30%
3×	33.33%	$0.965	−25.93%	$1.579	+21.21%	47.14%
2×	50.00%	$0.724	−44.44%	$1.776	+36.36%	80.81%

Where PENDLE's margin tiers step down

Maintenance margin is set by the tier the notional falls in.

Tier	Notional from	Max leverage	Maintenance margin
1 · charted	$0	5×	10.000%

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 → · PENDLE funding and margin tiers →