See another 700 million liquidation! Bitcoin keeps falling - when high leverage encounters tough hawkishness, how to escape from the top of institutional liquidation signals?

Original author：加密头条

Original source：https://www.youtube.com/embed/qtGDty8pNBU

The cryptocurrency market in May 2026 has experienced violent fluctuations one after another. From late May to the end of the month, the liquidation volume of futures contracts across the entire network exceeded US$700 million several times within 24 hours. On May 31, the peak liquidation volume once reached US$689.68 million, and more than 260,000 traders were forced to liquidate their positions. This is not a single incident, but the inevitable result of the intersection of multiple forces at a macro node. From an external perspective, the escalation of geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East has directly reduced the risk appetite of global risk assets, becoming the trigger for this round of liquidation and selling; internally, the Federal Reserve continued to maintain a high interest rate range of 4.25% to 4.5% in the minutes of its May interest rate meeting, and interest rate cut expectations have been repeatedly pushed back, making crypto assets, a zero-interest variety, continue to bear pressure from rising risk-free yields. At the same time, the total open interest in Bitcoin futures reached a historical peak of US$72 billion in mid-May. Once excessive accumulated leverage encounters external shocks, the deleveraging effect will be multiplied. Important progress has been made on the regulatory front - the U.S. Senate reached a major compromise on the CLARITY Act, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority also officially issued the first batch of stablecoin licenses to HSBC, Standard Chartered and other institutions. The Bitcoin ETF level showed a more complex differentiation trend. In May, the overall strong net inflow was still recorded at US$5.23 billion. However, at the end of the month, the Bitcoin ETF experienced a huge single-day outflow of more than US$600 million, while the Ethereum ETF saw a net inflow of approximately US$70 million on the same day - institutional funds were undergoing significant sector rotation. This liquidation storm tells us: High-leverage structures are still the Achilles heel of the crypto market, and every price correction will turn into hundreds of millions of dollars in forced liquidations on the on-chain liquidation heat map. When the regulatory framework becomes clearer and the entry threshold for institutions continues to decrease, these superficial positive signals will form a long-term dual-track game with internal structural fragility. The real way for investors to survive is to always manage risks, rather than trying to fight against the macro cycle.