Billions in Crypto Liquidations: Inside October’s $19B Crash
Friday, 10 October marked one of the most severe systemic crises in crypto’s history, as a $19 billion liquidation wave followed Donald Trump’s announcement of a 100% tariff on Chinese imports. Bitcoin plunged as low as $104,782.88 during the 10–11 October period, down more than 14% from its Friday high of $122,574.46. Meanwhile Ether fell 12.2% to $3,436.29. Smaller tokens suffered the most: Cosmos’s native token, ATOM, for instance, briefly collapsed from $4 to $0.001 on Binance.
This was no ordinary correction. The event was nine times larger than the February 2025 crash and 19 times greater than both the March 2020 meltdown and the FTX collapse of November 2022.
