Crypto market traders were hit with record liquidations just days after Bitcoin hit an all-time high. The volatility was largely caused by US President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs.
Cryptocurrency prices plunged on Friday after Trump said he would impose an additional 100 percent tariff on China and export controls on software. The declines accelerated and were then exacerbated by what data tracker Coinglass described as “the largest liquidation event in crypto history.”
Although there was already market weakness on Friday, Trump’s post led to a drop of more than 12 percent in Bitcoin. The largest token, which hit a record above $125,000 earlier this week, was hovering below $113,000 in London on Saturday morning.
According to Coinglass data, bets worth more than $19 billion have been wiped out and more than 1.6 million traders have been liquidated in the past 24 hours. More than $7 billion of these positions were sold in less than an hour of trading on Friday.
In its post on Binance Holdings Ltd, the world’s largest crypto exchange, reports only one liquidation order per second, according to the post.
“The focus now turns to counterparty exposure and whether this is causing broader market contagion,” said Brian Strugats, chief trader at Multicoin Capital. He added that some estimates put total liquidations at over $30 billion.
Next key level
The next major support level for Bitcoin, according to Caroline Mauron, co-founder of Orbit Markets, is $100,000, below which “would mark the end of the past three-year bull cycle.” The Bitcoin options market reflected Mauron’s views with the highest number of put or sell strikes at $110,000 and the next highest at $100,000, according to data on the Deribit platform.
The intensification of US-China rhetoric sent shockwaves across markets, putting pressure on stocks, oil and crypto, while fueling a search for the perceived safety of government bonds and gold.
“A renewed trade war erupted between China and the US on Friday, causing uncertainty in markets and gripping risky assets,” said Ravi Doshi, co-head of markets at prime broker FalconX. The company’s derivatives unit saw excessive demand for downside protection during the day, Doshi said.
David Jeong, CEO of Tread.fi, an algorithmic crypto trading platform for institutional traders, said the market was experiencing a “black swan event.”
“It is likely that many institutions did not expect this level of volatility and with the way leveraged perpetual futures are designed, many large traders, including institutions, would have been liquidated,” he said.
Perpetual futures are a type of contract with no expiration date and are used by crypto traders to trade with leverage 24 hours a day.
Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at Kronos Research, said the defeat was “fueled by fears of tariffs between the US and China, but fueled by too much institutional power.”
“This highlights the macroeconomic links of crypto,” he said. “Expect volatility, but watch for rebound signals in cleared markets.”
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Published on October 11, 2025
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