Chip stocks ate crypto's lunch: SanDisk perps out-liquidated XRP in $800M wipeout 🧠

Crypto exchanges forcibly closed about $803 million in leveraged positions over 24 hours through Oct. 13, with bullish bets accounting for 86% of the losses as bitcoin BTC $83,696.96 briefly slipped below $81,000 in early Asian trading. Roughly $595 million, nearly three-quarters of the total, was liquidated in the final 12 hours as South Korea's KOSPI fell more than 6% and bitcoin touched just under $81,000. The single largest wipeout was a $9.65 million bitcoin long on Binance, closed near $81,700, with Binance responsible for half of all liquidations across the 10 exchanges tracked.

Perpetual futures on SanDisk (SNDK), the U.S. memory-chip maker, saw $19.5 million in liquidations, edging out HYPE's $19 million and XRP's $18.78 million on the cross-asset heatmap. These contracts let traders take leveraged positions on stocks around the clock on crypto venues without expiry. Futures tracking SK Hynix, Micron and SOXL, a triple-leveraged U.S. semiconductor ETF, also appeared, with $7.21 million liquidated on SOXL alone. The losses tracked a sharp selloff in Seoul, where Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each dropped about 8% on concerns over AI-related valuations and competition from Chinese memory-chip makers.

Bitcoin led token liquidations at $181 million, with ether ETH close behind at $178 million despite its smaller market capitalization. The trend reversed later in the session as bitcoin recovered above $83,000, with short positions making up 79% of the roughly $74 million liquidated over the following four hours, signaling a decoupling from tumbling Korean equities and softer Nasdaq futures.