Crypto liquidations drive historic market turbulence 

Crypto prices plunged Friday, triggering the market’s most severe — and perhaps most consequential — wave of liquidations on record.

More than $19 billion worth of liquidations were triggered during the past day, according to Coinglass data, with $16.8 billion of that figure on the long side. The true figure “is likely much higher” owing to the way Binance, which saw significant volume during the event, reports  liquidations, Coinglass wrote on X.  

The decentralized perpetuals trading platform Hyperliquid saw a significant portion of the day’s action: $10.3 billion in liquidations, with $9.3 billion on the long side, per Coinglass.

The reaction was particularly intense in crypto markets, fueled further by the escalating unwind of leveraged positions and a collapse in open interest. Bitcoin’s price fell to as low as $104,000, with altcoins big and small impacted more severely.

Felix Jauvin, host of the Forward Guidance podcast, told me, “This was one of the messiest liquidation events that I’ve seen in a long time. The last one I remember like this was probably May 2021. With estimates of around $20b of liquidations, it’s likely someone big got carried out and there was nowhere to hide other than spot long.”

“Leverage long? Liquidated. Leverage short? Forced deleveraging through exchange auto deleveraging (ADL),” he explained. “I’m hearing a lot of stories of people that were short, took profits and bought the dip and then were quickly liquidated right after. It’s a mess and will take quite a while for market makers to reshore up liquidity again.”

Onchain activity surged dramatically, though some users encountered significant delays in the chaos. Aave founder Stani Kulechov wrote on X that “[t]he protocol operated flawlessly, automatically liquidating a record $180M worth of collateral in just one hour, without any human intervention.”

Speculation quickly surfaced on Crypto Twitter around yet-to-be-named industry firms suffering major losses that, in turn, deepened the rout. Speculation quickly surfaced on Crypto Twitter around yet-to-be-named industry firms suffering major losses that, in turn, deepened the rout. Alongside these theories, traders shared testimonies of complete or near-total wipeouts of leveraged positions.

“Probably one of the most severe flushes I’ve ever seen on alts, I didn’t even imagine alts had this much leverage in them,” Cobie, the long-time crypto trader and commentator, wrote on X Friday. “It feels like someone got hit very hard and will see a large body float to the surface soon, reminds me a little of summer 2021.”

“Don’t let a leverage blowup dictate your long-term views. The future is bright, good things to come, patience is rewarded,” he went on to conclude.

Bitcoin’s price has since partially recovered and is trading around $112,200 at the time of writing. The collective crypto market cap is down 9% in the past day, per Coingecko. Among the altcoins bucking the trend was Zcash, which posted additional gains post-crash after climbing sharply in the days and hours beforehand.

Some market participants swiftly drew comparisons to the dramatic market drops around Tether/Luna and FTX. Both proved to be market-defining events last cycle. 

Beyond the raw numbers — Coinglass reports 1.6 million traders liquidated in the past 24 hours — the event demonstrated crypto’s vastly expanded interconnectedness with global markets and power politics.

The selloff appears part of a broader reaction to a new flare-up in US President Donald Trump’s trade war against China. Trump, in a pair of posts on his Truth Social website, declared his intention to impose 100% tariffs in response to a move by China to restrict access to its rare earth materials. The U.S. would also restrict Chinese access to “critical software”, Trump said, per the New York Times. Major US indices tumbled on the news, especially after Trump doubled down on his tariff threats. 

While the US-China trade relationship has fluctuated between cool détente and outright hostility since Trump took office, his latest moves struck at the heart of the most important exchange of goods between the two countries: software that fuels the global AI revolution and the crucial ingredients required to manufacture the chips behind it.

Beyond the macro implications, the Trumpian roots of the crypto market turbulence may prove to be more consequential than the losses themselves.

Nearly 10 months into his second term, Trump and his family have fully embraced the industry — personally, professionally, and politically. The industry, too, embraced Trump, pouring millions of dollars into GOP election coffers.

In return, the Trump administration has pushed policies that favor the industry, and it ended an era of oversight under former President Joseph Biden that prioritized regulatory pressure and legal combat. Congress passed landmark stablecoin regulation and, despite disputes between Republicans and Democrats, lawmakers are likely to pass market structure reforms sometime in the future as well. 

Still, Friday’s events confirm that, despite the favorable treatment, the crypto market is not immune to Trump’s geopolitical whims. The industry’s march across Wall Street — ETFs, DATs, investments and more — means that crypto may inescapably rise or fall as Trump’s hot-and-cold trade war with China continues. Friday’s events could happen again, though perhaps not with the same scale or intensity.

The coming days will reveal the extent of the damages, the firms impacted, and the degree to which publicly traded crypto companies will be affected. 

More broadly, it remains to be seen whether Friday was the start of a new crypto bear market — or the latest twist in its most important bull market yet.