Forced Liquidation Cascades in Unregulated Perpetual Futures Markets: Evidence from $176.6 Billion in Forced Position Exits

This paper presents the first forensic longitudinal analysis of systematic liquidation extraction in cryptocurrency perpetual derivatives markets. Over 365 consecutive trading days from 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026, a total of $176.6 billion in forced position exits was recorded across eleven exchanges, denominated in dollar-equivalent collateral (predominantly USDT stablecoin) representing real capital deposited by market participants. The dataset was assembled from CoinGlass liquidation history and CoinGecko spot market data, with daily readings across ten independent variables, including three intraday funding rate readings at 8-hour settlement intervals, producing 13,800+ unique observations. A parallel BTC-specific dataset records $54.0 billion in Bitcoin forced exits (30.0% of the total). A full-year OHLC dataset provides intraday price data for every trading day. Every figure in this paper derives directly from the recorded dataset. No estimates, models, or proxies are used in any quantitative claim.