If you were holding leveraged bags on chip stocks this weekend, the vibes are off. While Wall Street was closed for the Saturday, crypto traders using perpetual futures—contracts that let you bet on stocks 24/7 on-chain—got absolutely wrecked. In just 10 minutes, nearly $52 million in positions were wiped out in a forced liquidation cascade.
What went down
According to data from CoinGlass, roughly $51.6 million in chip-stock-linked contracts were force-closed between 21:22 and 21:32 UTC. The carnage was mostly on the side of people betting prices would pump, with $38 million in long positions getting liquidated.
David Jeong, CEO of trading firm Tread.fi, noted that the sell-off began on Binance, with large sell orders hitting SanDisk and Micron contracts around 21:22 UTC. Within less than two seconds, a cluster of addresses opened bets against six different chip-linked contracts, triggering a domino effect on exchanges like Hyperliquid. The SOXL fund, which triples daily chip share moves, took the biggest L with $12.7 million in liquidations, while SanDisk and SK Hynix contracts each saw about $10.8 million in losses.
Why it happened
Because traditional markets were dark, there was no underlying stock price to anchor the contracts. This meant the crypto exchanges were essentially trading in a vacuum, with prices driven entirely by market participants reacting to each other. When a trader gets liquidated, the forced sale pushes the price lower, triggering the next trader in line—a classic degen nightmare.
Memory-chip stocks were already struggling after a rough week of investors worrying about competition from Chinese firm CXMT. We won't know the full extent of the damage until U.S. markets open Monday and the contracts re-align with real-world stock prices.
Why it matters
This is a brutal reminder that leverage is not a game. When you use crypto platforms to bet on trad-fi assets outside of market hours, you’re playing in a liquidity-deprived environment where one major seller can spark a chain reaction. Always remember: crypto is high-risk, price action can be volatile, and none of this is financial advice.
