On May 28, 2024, a $352 million liquidation sweep hit crypto derivatives markets, sending Bitcoin to a session low of $72,642. The flush wiped out leveraged long positions and threatened to turn May into Bitcoin's first red month of the year. Two years on, the event still stands as one of the sharper intraday shakeouts of that cycle.
The $78,000 peak that preceded it
Just three days earlier, Bitcoin had touched $78,000 on May 25. That was the local top of a rally that had carried the asset up from the low $60,000s. The market looked strong, but underneath, open interest had ballooned. The stage was set for a deleveraging.
The $352 million flush
When the selling started on May 28, it accelerated fast. Liquidations piled up as stop-losses cascaded, and the price dropped from around $76,000 to $72,642 in a matter of hours. That's a 4.3% move that forced more than a third of a billion dollars in longs to close. The exchange handling the bulk of the volume didn't name the trigger, but the pattern was textbook: a concentrated sell order that caught over-leveraged bulls off guard.
A monthly loss in the balance
Heading into that final week of May, Bitcoin was still up about 2% for the month. The liquidation dropped it into negative territory intraday, putting its first monthly loss of 2024 squarely in play. By the close on May 31, Bitcoin managed to recover some ground, but the scare was real. The episode underscored how thin the margin for error was after a long run-up.
Today, with Bitcoin trading far higher, the May 2024 shakeout is a reminder that even in strong trends, leverage can snap back in minutes. No one saw the $78,000 peak as the top of the week at the time — but the liquidation that followed proved that bull markets don't go up in a straight line.
