LONDON— Crypto has lived through many rough patches, yet the past week ranks among the harshest. What started on 10 October with a terse tweet from Donald Trump, floating 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods, spiralled into a market-wide wipeout.
Roughly $600 billion vanished across digital assets in days. Bitcoin, often cast as digital gold, slid from a record $126,000 on 6 October to under $105,000 by Friday, a 17 per cent fall that triggered the biggest liquidation event on record. Some $19.3 billion in positions were flushed in 24 hours, hitting 1.6 million accounts.
This was more than a routine pullback. It was a trial for Bitcoin’s market plumbing, exposing how macro shocks and high leverage still dictate direction. As the weekend opened, BTC steadied near $106,500. The debate now splits into two camps: was this the final shakeout before the next leg higher, or the start of a deeper slide for an asset now tightly linked with traditional markets?
The spark was simple and abrupt. Trump’s post at 4:50 pm ET on 10 October revived trade war fears and knocked equities, with the Nasdaq Composite down 3.56 per cent. Crypto, open around the clock, caught the downdraft within minutes. Investors ran to Treasuries and gold, while Bitcoin sank with other risk assets.
Bitcoin Dropped Overnight
BTC lost $3,000 in a flash and slipped under $110,000 as weekend liquidity thinned and panic took hold. Altcoins were hit harder. Solana dropped 30 per cent to $178, Ethereum fell 12 per cent to $3,878, and meme coins on the fringe slid 40 per cent or more as forced selling accelerated.
On-chain analysts mapped the chain reaction. Bitcoin futures open interest had swelled to $115.97 billion in early October, the highest in five years, with extreme leverage on major venues such as Binance and Bybit.
A $60 million token sale, allegedly tied to price feed manipulation on one exchange, skewed oracles and kicked off a cascade. Zaheer Ebtikar of Split Capital argued it was mechanical deleveraging, not broad spot selling, and said thin books gave liquidations oversized force that fed on itself.
Talk of foul play spread fast. Investigators, including the pseudonymous Eye, linked a $735 million Bitcoin short opened minutes before the tariff post to a wallet associated with trader Garrett Jin, known as Garrett Bullish.
Reports suggest the trade profited by about $192 million as prices dived, fuelling claims that an insider or whale pounced on the shock. Dr Martin Hiesboeck at Uphold described it as a targeted hit on Binance’s Unified Account system.
He said collateral quirks knocked synthetic assets such as USDE and BNSOL off their pegs, adding to roughly $1 billion in forced selling.
Such claims are familiar in crypto, yet they highlight a market still finding its feet. The $19.3 billion washout dwarfed past blow-ups. It topped liquidations around the FTX collapse in November 2022 by twelve times, and the March 2020 Covid crash by sixteen times. History is packed with sharp resets.
Past Crypto Dumps
Bitcoin fell 80 per cent in 2018 after the ICO bust. It dropped 53 per cent in May 2021 after Tesla reversed course and China cracked down on mining. These moments drove out speculators, and yet the asset kept going. Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy, which holds 252,220 BTC, called every crash a cleansing event and framed volatility as a gift for committed holders.
Views on what comes next differ. On-chain analyst Willy Woo pointed to solid investor flows, even as stocks slid. He framed the drop in open interest, down about $20 billion, as a healthy reset similar to bear market lows in 2022, which could open the door to new inflows in Q4.
Trader Ash Crypto , who flagged a fall to $106,000 in advance, said the flush ended a euphoric phase, and still expects the chance of $150,000 for BTC later this year, which could light up altcoins. Lark Davis of Wealth Mastery warned that deeper losses are still possible, with some targeting the $90,000s or even $80,000s if tariffs escalate.
Derive.xyz co-founder Nick Forster noted a rush for protection, with traders buying puts at $115,000 and $95,000 for October expiry, and a cluster of ether puts building around $2,600 into December.
Sean Dawson, head of research at Derive, counted hourly liquidations near $7 billion, mostly long positions, and called it a full reset of excess risk. Trader Pentoshi compared the hit to altcoins with the violence seen during COVID, placing it among the top three selloffs of all time.
At the centre of the storm sat Binance, the largest exchange by volume. Systems strained under pressure, and some Earn products depegged. USDE slipped to $0.65, and BNSOL also wobbled, leading to $283 million in user reimbursements announced on 13 October.
Binance said the fall began before the depeg and blamed odd spot prints on old limit orders from 2019 that reappeared during the chaos.
BlackRock iShares Trust
Yet scrutiny grew. Analyst Colin Wu pointed to a planned strike that used gaps in the exchange’s margin design, where internal pricing diverged from oracle feeds and inflated collateral calls. Binance sped up a move to Oracle pricing and pledged $728 million in total compensation.
Critics such as @0xPepesso on X cried manipulation and pushed withdrawal calls, raising fears about seizures by US authorities. CEO Changpeng Zhao fired back at gold advocate Peter Schiff and reminded followers that Bitcoin has climbed from pennies to six figures in sixteen years.
Institutions received a stark reminder about liquidity. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, known as IBIT, is nearing $100 billion in assets, yet ETFs cannot trade on weekends. Holders were trapped during the after-hours plunge.
Larry Fink has talked up tokenization, but this flash crash, which some framed as an oracle-driven hit, showed the gap between vision and current plumbing. While gold surged to $4,300, tariff fears and China’s rare-earth controls turned from tailwind to headwind for crypto.
Even so, history often favours recovery. After the 2018 bear market, Bitcoin climbed about 300 percent in 2019. After the 2021 rout, it quadrupled by 2024. Woo’s data suggests spot demand held up, and ETFs still drew $2.7 billion last week. Saylor described it as a transfer from weak hands to stronger buyers. The line echoed widely across X during the panic, and many repeated that volatility still rewards patience.
Focus now sits on key levels. Traders watch $105,000 to $110,000 as an important support zone. A break could open a move towards $90,000. A softer stance on tariffs from Trump might flip sentiment and fuel a rebound.
Pressure on Binance is rising, regulators are watching, and confidence needs rebuilding. For Bitcoin, it is another furnace test on the way to broader acceptance. Or, as Zaheer Ebtikar summed up, pain separates consistent holders from short-term chasers.
