A weekend sell-off in a Nasdaq 100–linked perpetual futures market on EdgeX triggered roughly $13 million in liquidations, highlighting the risks of trading equity-index perps when underlying traditional markets are closed.
On Saturday, a newly created wallet began executing a six-hour time-weighted average price (TWAP) order to short 398 XYZ100 contracts, worth roughly $10 million, according to onchain data from Hypurrscan.
The sell pressure pushed the price of XYZ100 down more than 3.5% within minutes, triggering a cascade of liquidations.
Liquidations refer to the automatic closure of a leveraged position by a broker or exchange and happens when a trader’s losses have depleted their collateral to a point where it is no longer sufficient to maintain the position.
Blockchain data shows that one trader alone lost approximately $7.4 million in long positions, while another was liquidated for $2.7 million, bringing total liquidations on the market to around $13 million.
Several traders on X questioned whether the market was vulnerable to manipulation during off-hours, noting that XYZ100 fell nearly 4% over the weekend despite no corresponding macro or equity news. Others argued that such moves are an inherent risk of trading equity-linked crypto perps outside regular market hours.
“On weekends, you’re not trading the Nasdaq anymore,” one trader wrote. “You’re trading whoever has the most capital on a thin order book.”
EdgeX has rapidly grown into one of the largest venues for perpetual futures trading. According to DefiLlama data, the platform processed approximately $167 billion in perp trading volume last month, frequently rivaling major competitors such as Aster and Hyperliquid in daily volume.
This particular liquidation cascade demonstrates growing demand for tokenized equity products but also the risks of trading products that that mirror price of a closed market.
