The Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision sparked sudden market volatility, wiping out leveraged positions for nearly 90,000 traders and creating an unusually balanced wave of losses between bullish and bearish bets.

Although major cryptocurrencies ended the day with little change, the stable prices hid sharp two-way moves around the Fed meeting. The abrupt swings caused significant liquidations across leveraged futures markets as traders were caught on both sides of the move.

CoinGlass data showed that approximately $286 million in crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, affecting 87,294 traders. Long positions represented around $186 million of the losses, while short positions accounted for nearly $100 million, highlighting a market that moved sharply in opposite directions before settling back near previous levels.

Bitcoin traders saw losses almost evenly distributed between bulls and bears. Roughly $57 million worth of BTC positions were liquidated, including about $28 million in long positions and $29 million in shorts. Bitcoin moved between $63,247 and $64,660 during the period, a narrow range of less than 2%, but the volatility was enough to trigger liquidations on both sides.

The largest individual liquidation was a $2.9 million bitcoin position on Binance.

Ether recorded the highest liquidation amount among major cryptocurrencies, with about $58 million in positions wiped out, mostly involving long traders. Ether fluctuated between $1,850 and $1,920 during the session. At the latest update, bitcoin was trading near $63,900, roughly unchanged from 24 hours earlier, while ether remained around $1,900.

The biggest wave of liquidations came after Wednesday’s Fed meeting, when the widely followed policy decision triggered rapid market fluctuations. The announcement contributed to around $188 million in liquidations, with long positions accounting for approximately $130 million.

Losses also extended beyond crypto-native assets into equity perpetual futures listed on digital asset exchanges. About $19 million in SanDisk contracts were liquidated, along with $10 million in Micron positions, $7 million in SK Hynix contracts, and $7 million in SOXL, a leveraged semiconductor ETF. These products allow traders to speculate on stocks and ETFs using crypto exchange infrastructure and similar leverage mechanics as bitcoin futures.

Most of the liquidations in these equity-linked products came from bullish positions. Micron recorded roughly $9 million in long liquidations compared with $1 million in shorts, while SanDisk’s long liquidations were about twice the size of short liquidations.

Many traders had used crypto derivatives platforms to bet on continued gains in the AI semiconductor sector, entering the downturn with significant long exposure.

The timing proved unfavorable as chip stocks faced their sharpest decline of the year. SK Hynix shares dropped 17% on Wednesday despite reporting a 557% jump in profits, as investors focused on results missing already elevated expectations. South Korea’s Kospi has fallen more than 40% from its June high.

This was the second major disruption involving equity perpetual futures on crypto platforms this week. Earlier on Monday, a single trade on a low-liquidity Korean pre-market venue pushed Trade.xyz’s SK Hynix perpetual contract down 19%, triggering roughly $60 million in liquidations. The exchange has since agreed to reimburse affected traders.