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 $717K. 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 15:00 UTC, refreshed every 2 hours and drawn here in 4-hour steps. The dashed line is the live mark, $3.23, from a snapshot 0 minutes old. Two different ages, so neither is allowed to stand for the other.

$28.2Mmodelled notional price traded through inside this window

26.28%of modelled notional sits outside the drawn price range

$3.18 – $4.57the 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, $19.18M	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	5.000% 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	Fitted to the traded range, $3.18–$4.57, plus headroom. 26.28% 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× 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 level, from mark
2×	9.00%	$1.73M	−47.4%
5×	19.00%	$3.64M	−15.8%
10×	27.00%	$5.18M	−5.3%

Where the model puts the biggest clusters

Price levels still carrying modelled notional at the right-hand edge of the chart, largest first — $2.22M 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
$3.67	+14.30%	shorts	$384,466	2.00%
$3.66	+13.95%	shorts	$301,856	1.57%
$3.35	+4.50%	shorts	$264,307	1.38%
$4.01	+24.80%	shorts	$230,649	1.20%
$4.23	+31.79%	shorts	$193,185	1.01%
$3.68	+14.65%	shorts	$185,090	0.97%
$3.37	+4.85%	shorts	$179,581	0.94%
$3.71	+15.70%	shorts	$162,905	0.85%
$4.21	+31.09%	shorts	$159,979	0.83%
$4.59	+42.99%	shorts	$154,002	0.80%

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
10× · max	10.00%	$3.060	−5.26%	$3.383	+4.76%	10.03%
8×	12.50%	$2.975	−7.89%	$3.460	+7.14%	15.04%
6×	16.67%	$2.833	−12.28%	$3.589	+11.11%	23.39%
5×	20.00%	$2.720	−15.79%	$3.691	+14.29%	30.08%
4×	25.00%	$2.550	−21.05%	$3.845	+19.05%	40.10%
3×	33.33%	$2.266	−29.82%	$4.101	+26.98%	56.81%

Where UNI steps down

Maintenance margin is set by the tier the notional falls in. Above $20.00M the corridor widens, because maintenance margin rises to 10.000%.

Tier	Notional from	Max leverage	Maintenance margin
1 · charted	$0	10×	5.000%
2	$20.00M	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 → · UNI funding and margin tiers →