Noticed a wild liquidation on Hyperliquid's oil contracts — nearly $40 million in 24 hours, with $36.9 million in shorts. This happened due to a 30% spike in oil prices caused by escalating tensions with Iran and Israel. The CL-USDC contract soared to $114.77, gaining about 20% in a day. It seems traders who opened short positions over the weekend expecting a decline paid a heavy price.

What happened: over the weekend, the situation in the Middle East sharply worsened — Iran's new supreme leader, Israeli strikes, Iranian rockets hitting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Oil production in Iraq dropped by 60%, Kuwait and the UAE reduced output. Anyone holding short positions was forced to close urgently.

An interesting point — Hyperliquid became one of the few places where you could get leverage on oil during the weekend when regular commodity markets are closed. Open interest in CL-USDC reached $195 million with a daily volume of $570 million. A year ago, such volumes on tokenized commodities seemed impossible.

In the crypto market overall, nearly 95,000 positions were liquidated in 24 hours, totaling $364 million. Bitcoin briefly broke above $76K but retreated to $74K. Interestingly, funding rates for perpetual Bitcoin contracts on one of the major exchanges have remained negative for 46 days — even as open interest grows, traders remain bearish. It appears crypto derivatives are becoming a serious macro tool, not just for crypto speculation.