Bitcoin slipped below $82,000, and leveraged bulls paid for it almost immediately. Roughly $120 million in long positions across crypto were liquidated in the span of 15 minutes.

The drop pushed Bitcoin under the $82,000 mark during intraday trading on October 12. As the price fell, exchanges began forcibly closing leveraged long positions, which are bets that the price would keep rising.

That forced selling is called a liquidation. It also tends to feed on itself, because every automatic sell order adds more downward pressure on the price.

Data from platforms including CoinGlass and Hyperliquid pointed to heavy long exposure among traders heading into the move.

CoinGlass reported that long positions made up the bulk of the liquidations in…