October 2025 will be remembered as one of the darkest days in crypto history. In a single devastating 24-hour period, the cryptocurrency market experienced its largest liquidation event ever recorded, with over $19 billion in leveraged positions completely wiped out. The catalyst? President Donald Trump’s shock announcement of 100% tariffs on Chinese imports.
The Perfect Storm: How It Unfolded
On October 10, 2025, President Trump took to Truth Social to announce his plan for a massive 100% tariff on all Chinese imports, responding to Beijing’s new export restrictions on products containing rare earth elements. The announcement sent shockwaves through global markets, but nowhere was the impact felt more violently than in the crypto space.
Within hours of the tariff announcement, digital currencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana were among the most affected, bringing total liquidations to $18.28 billion. As markets processed the news and panic selling accelerated, over 1.6 million traders saw their positions evaporate.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. The crash came less than a week after Bitcoin set a new all-time high above $126,000, prompting traders to believe the market was setting up a fresh run higher. This confidence had led to massive overleveraging across the market.
The Numbers That Made History
The scale of this liquidation event is truly unprecedented:
Total Liquidations: Over $19.1 billion in leveraged positions was erased in 24 hours, far surpassing any previous single-day crypto drawdown
Historical Context:
- March 2020 COVID crash: Approximately $1.2 billion liquidated
- November 2022 FTX collapse: Around $1.6 billion in positions liquidated
- October 2025 tariff crash: Nearly 20 times the COVID panic liquidations
Long positions accounted for the bulk of the damage, totaling $16.83 billion, while $2.49 billion came from shorts. This asymmetry reveals how heavily traders were betting on continued upward momentum.
The Worst Hits: Major Cryptocurrencies Devastated
Bitcoin (BTC)
In the past 24 hours, roughly $5 billion of Bitcoin has been liquidated. The world’s largest cryptocurrency dropped from trading above $122,000 on Friday morning to around $113,600, and briefly dipped below $102,000 later that evening. Bitcoin is down almost 10% in the last five days.
Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum took an even harder hit. About $4 billion of Ether was liquidated. On Friday, Ether was priced at $4,365.63 and then sunk to $3,742.88 — a 14.2% decline. Some reports indicated it dropped even further to $3,373.
Solana (SOL)
About $2 billion of Solana was liquidated, with Solana priced at $223.10 on Friday falling to $178.72 — a nearly 20% plunge.
Altcoin Apocalypse
The real carnage unfolded across altcoins where liquidity evaporated:
- SUI suffered flash crashes, dropping to $0.55
- SUI is said to have seen a 70% drop
- Worldcoin fell around 40%
- ATOM recorded one of the most shocking prints in market history — collapsing to $0.001, an over 4,000x intraday wipeout
TOTAL3 — which tracks the market cap of everything but Bitcoin and Ether — lost 20% of its value in short order.
The Single Largest Liquidation Ever
Hyperliquid saw the largest single liquidation, an ETH-USDT position worth $203.36 million, as total exchange liquidations topped $10.3 billion. The decentralized exchange became ground zero for the carnage, with over 1,000 wallets on Hyperliquid getting completely liquidated, while 6,300 wallets are now in the red, with 205 losing over $1 million each.
Why It Got So Bad: The Leverage Problem
This wasn’t just a market correction—it was a leverage purge of historic proportions. Vincent Liu, CIO at Kronos Research, said the sell-off was “sparked by US-China tariff fears but fueled by institutional over-leverage”.
Trump’s threat to put 100% tariffs on Chinese goods sent everyone running for the exits, triggering an unwind in crypto that got so bad that marketplaces even closed out profitable positions, just to shed uncertainty. The phenomenon known as auto-deleveraging (ADL) kicked in across major exchanges.
CoinGlass pointed out that the true liquidation total could be even higher, since some exchanges report liquidations with delays or limits (for example, Binance logs only one liquidation order per second). This means the $19 billion figure may actually be conservative.
Market Impact: $400 Billion Evaporated
The global crypto market cap fell over 9% in 24 hours, sliding to $3.8 trillion as prices tumbled across major assets. The broader impact extended beyond crypto, as the Nasdaq and S&P 500 on Friday saw their steepest declines in six months.
Sentiment shifted dramatically, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index flipping sharply from “Greed” to “Fear” within hours.
The Winners in the Chaos
While most traders faced catastrophic losses, some made fortunes. Leaderboard data shows the top 100 traders on Hyperliquid gained $1.69 billion collectively. Reports emerged of a major Hyperliquid whale who allegedly shorted nine figures worth of BTC and ETH, earning an estimated $190 million profit.
Expert Analysis: A Black Swan Event
David Jeong, CEO of Tread.fi, said “This was a black swan event,” adding that many institutions “did not expect this level of volatility”.
Market veterans drew parallels to past “black swan” events but acknowledged the sheer scale was new, with one X user remarking in astonishment: “What happened now will be remembered for years. The largest liquidation event in crypto history worse than #FTX, #COVID, or #2018 combined”.
What Happens Next?
The crypto market faces several key questions:
Contagion Risk: Brian Strugats from Multicoin Capital warned that the market is now watching for possible “contagion” risks across firms. With so much capital wiped out, the concern is whether leveraged trading firms will be forced into more large-scale selling.
Recovery Potential: Analysts say a tariff reversal could trigger a short-term recovery in crypto markets, though liquidation losses remain locked in. Trump has hinted he could reverse the tariffs if China changes course before November.
Long-term Outlook: Despite the devastation, some analysts believe this represents a healthy deleveraging that could set the stage for more sustainable growth. Arthur Hayes suggested that “we won’t be seeing those levels any time soon on many high-quality alts,” implying a structural market reset rather than terminal decline.
Key Takeaways
Scale: This $19+ billion liquidation event dwarfs all previous crypto crashes, including the FTX collapse and COVID panic combined.
Speed: The entire collapse happened in roughly 24 hours, with over $7 billion vanishing in just the first hour.
Leverage: The severity of the crash exposed dangerous levels of overleveraging across the crypto market.
Macro Sensitivity: A single policy announcement was enough to trigger the largest liquidation in crypto history, highlighting the market’s vulnerability to macroeconomic shocks.
Systemic Risk: With 1.6 million traders liquidated and major players potentially facing contagion risks, the event raises serious questions about market structure and risk management.
As the dust settles, one thing is clear: October 10-11, 2025 will be etched into crypto history as the day when excessive leverage met its reckoning, and the market learned—once again—that what goes up on leverage can come crashing down just as fast.
This historic liquidation event serves as a stark reminder of the risks inherent in leveraged crypto trading and the market’s sensitivity to geopolitical developments. Traders and investors should carefully consider position sizing and leverage use in light of these unprecedented market movements.
