Recently, the crypto derivatives market experienced several hundred million dollars worth of concentrated liquidations in a very short period of time: According to Coinglass data, about 522 million dollars were liquidated across the network in the past 4 hours, including approximately 350 million dollars in short positions and about 172 million dollars in long positions, with shorts becoming the absolute main loss bearers; during this round of squeeze, the leverage risk was highly concentrated in top assets, with ETH and BTC being liquidated for about 268 million dollars and 161 million dollars respectively within the same time window. If we extend the statistical dimension to the past 24 hours, the total liquidations across the network amounted to approximately 684 million dollars, with short positions amounting to about 423 million dollars and long positions about 261 million dollars. The structure dominated by shorts still holds over a longer time dimension, with the largest single liquidation occurring in HYPERLIQUID-ETH-USD, amounting to about 2.028 million dollars. In contrast to this high-leverage, short-cycle funding squeeze, the mining side presented a slower but equally clear path of capital migration: in the context of a daily miner reward of about 35 million dollars on the Bitcoin network and about 2 million dollars for Zcash, Grayscale research director Zach Pandl’s calculations show that a single mining rig mining Zcash yields approximately double that of mining Bitcoin, with the revenue per megawatt hour of computing power being around four times higher. Driven by ZEC price performance, Zcash mining profits have soared, and since the beginning of this year, its total network hash rate has grown by more than 2.5 times; although the aforementioned行情 and mining data currently mainly come from a single source (Coinglass and Pandl) and have not been cross-verified through multiple sources, the correlation between the concentration of short liquidations during the same period and the accelerated migration of computing power to high unit-yield PoW networks indicates that the process of capital reallocation, hedging risks, and pursuing efficiency is unfolding synchronously across different time scales.

Shorts Hit Hard: 522 Million Liquidations in 4 Hours

From a 4-hour window, the leverage adjustment in the derivatives market is a typical case of "shorts hitting hard." According to Coinglass statistics, recently, a single 4-hour period saw approximately 522 million dollars in contract liquidations across the network, with shorts accounting for about 350 million dollars and longs about 172 million dollars, making shorts nearly two-thirds of the total. Directionally, the liquidation amount for shorts is significantly higher than for longs, indicating that prices moved unfavorably for shorts during the brief fluctuations, triggering concentrated passive deleveraging on the short side, rather than a balanced clearing on both sides.

During the same timeframe, the risk was highly concentrated in top assets: ETH saw approximately 268 million dollars liquidated, and BTC saw about 161 million dollars, with a combined total of around 429 million dollars, which accounted for the vast majority of the total 522 million dollars liquidated across the network. This suggests that the current round of short squeezing mainly occurred in highly liquid assets such as ETH and BTC, where leverage participation is the highest, while the liquidation volume of non-mainstream assets during these 4 hours was relatively limited. Thus, the pricing power of short-term leverage risk remains firmly in the hands of top assets.

684 Million Liquidations in 24 Hours and Large Orders

Shifting the perspective from the last 4 hours to the last 24 hours, Coinglass data shows that the total liquidation scale across the network was approximately 684 million dollars, with shorts amounting to about 423 million dollars and longs about 261 million dollars, reiterating that shorts remain the absolute main loss bearers over a longer timeframe. This means that the sharp short squeeze that occurred in the previous 4 hours was not an isolated event, but was embedded in a clearing process dominated by shorts that lasted at least an entire day. What seems like an "instant" move in the short term is actually a systematic clearing of accumulated short leverage.

From an asset distribution perspective, during these 24 hours, about 182 million dollars of BTC and approximately 262 million dollars of ETH were liquidated, with the combined total covering the majority of the network’s liquidations. Furthermore, the amount of liquidated ETH not only surpassed BTC but also was significantly above that of most long-tail assets. On this basis, the largest single liquidation in the past 24 hours occurred in HYPERLIQUID-ETH-USD, with an amount of about 2.028 million dollars, indicating that the ultra-large leveraged position on a single ETH contract was entirely wiped out during the volatility, creating a significant "spike" in the overall data. In terms of long-short structure, both the 24-hour and 4-hour windows showed short liquidation amounts significantly higher than those of longs, while the amount distribution was also lifted by a few huge ETH positions. The current leverage risk is reflected in both the continuous pressure on network-wide shorts and the amplification effect of some extreme positions on systematic volatility.

Zcash Mining Returns Double That of Bitcoin

From the perspective of the network's total market cap, Bitcoin remains the absolute main character in the PoW mining space. The data cited by Zach Pandl shows that the current total daily miner reward on the Bitcoin network is about 35 million dollars, while the daily miner reward for the Zcash network is only about 2 million dollars, presenting a difference in scale of nearly one order of magnitude. In other words, in terms of the absolute scale of the "allocable cake," the total income for Bitcoin miners is far greater than that for Zcash miners.

However, switching the perspective from total volume to unit returns changes the conclusion. Pandl's calculations indicate that with the same equipment conditions, a single mining rig daily yields approximately double that of mining Bitcoin when mining Zcash; when measured per megawatt hour of computing power, the yield for Zcash is about four times that for Bitcoin. In his view, it is precisely the strong performance of ZEC prices that has elevated the fiat currency income corresponding to each unit of computing power, resulting in Zcash mining showing much better unit economics than Bitcoin, given constant electricity and machine costs. This has also become a key background for the recent reevaluation of the direction of related computing power and capital allocations.

2.5 Times Surge in Hash Rate Points to PoW Migration

Amid the rapidly widening gap in mining unit returns, according to data from a single source, the total network hash rate for Zcash has grown by more than 2.5 times this year; this is not a result of instantaneous price fluctuations but rather a structural change that accumulates over several months. For PoW miners, decision constraints mainly stem from electricity costs, hardware depreciation, and unit returns; as long as a chain has significantly higher unit returns under similar electricity prices and equipment conditions, hash power will naturally migrate through means such as shutting down, switching mining, or deploying new machines. Pandl views the current yield advantage of Zcash and this round of hash rate surge as a holistic signal: capital and hash power are rebalancing from low-yield PoW networks to high-yield networks, rather than passively "chasing trends in mining."

A horizontal comparison reveals that this migration is more about the redistribution of the edges of the map rather than a rewriting of the central order. On one hand, the total daily miner reward on the Bitcoin network is currently about 35 million dollars, while Zcash is only about 2 million dollars, indicating that the former is still the main battlefield among PoW assets in absolute terms; on the other hand, in Pandl's calculations, a single mining rig daily yields approximately double that of mining Bitcoin for Zcash, and about four times when measured per megawatt hour. This suggests that even though the total reward for Zcash is far lower than that of Bitcoin, it is still sufficient to marginally attract some hash power and electricity budgets to shift. As a result, Bitcoin continues to bear the majority volume of PoW hash power and miner cash flows, while high-unit-yield networks like Zcash attract the portion of hash power that is more sensitive and seeks return elasticity, leading to a slow but clear marginal migration in the PoW landscape rather than a dramatic reversal of dominance.

Short Liquidations and Mining Migration: The Capital Code

The recent occurrences of approximately 522 million dollars and 684 million dollars in liquidations across the network over 4 hours and 24 hours respectively, with shorts (about 350 million and 423 million dollars) significantly outpacing longs in this concentrated short squeeze, viewed alongside Zcash's single rig yield being about double that of Bitcoin and per-unit electricity yield being around four times, which has driven a growth of over 2.5 times in hash rate this year, fundamentally reflects the same batch of capital making risk-reward choices across different time scales: short-term leveraged capital is betting on price declines at the contract level, resulting in an imbalance in pricing proven by leading liquidation amounts of ETH and BTC and a single liquidation of about 2.028 million dollars in HYPERLIQUID-ETH-USD; meanwhile, the mining sector is slowly relocating some hash power from Bitcoin, a core network with a total reward of about 35 million dollars, to Zcash, which currently offers higher unit returns, although its overall reward is only about 2 million dollars. It is important to emphasize that both the Coinglass liquidation statistics and the yield and hash rate data provided by Zach Pandl come from a single source and have limited time windows, presently representing a snapshot rather than a long-term conclusion. Future continuance of the short liquidation structure, Zcash unit yield, and hash rate curves reinforcing in the same direction will be necessary before recognizing today's phenomena as a genuine trend in capital reallocation rather than a one-time noise.

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