Analysts warn of contagion risks as leveraged positions collapse, calling it crypto’s biggest liquidation event in history.
The crypto market faced its biggest single-day wipeout in history on Friday.
In just 24 hours, over 1.6 million traders were liquidated, with a total loss of more than $19 billion, according to data from Coinglass. The trigger was reportedly President Donald Trump’s new 100% tariff on China and fresh export restrictions that rattled global markets.
Bitcoin, which had just touched a new all-time high above $125,000 earlier this week, plunged more than 12%, slipping below $113,000 by Saturday morning. On some exchanges, it briefly crashed to around $102K before making a small recovery.
Trump’s announcement reignited the US-China trade war, hitting global risk assets across the board. Stocks, oil, and crypto all went red. The Nasdaq fell 3.6%, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones also posted their biggest drops in months.
Crypto traders, many of them heavily leveraged, faced the worst impact. As prices started sliding, automatic liquidations kicked in across exchanges.
Coinglass reported $19.13 billion in liquidations, though the real number could be higher – Binance only reports one liquidation per second.
Within an hour on Friday, over $7 billion in positions vanished. The largest single liquidation came from decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, where an Ethereum trade worth $203 million was wiped out. The global crypto market cap dropped from $4.2 trillion to $3.8 trillion, and market sentiment flipped sharply from “Greed” to “Fear” on the Crypto Fear & Greed Index.
“This was a black swan event,” said David Jeong, CEO of Tread.fi, adding that many institutions “did not expect this level of volatility.” Leverage-heavy perpetual futures made the crash worse, triggering forced liquidations across major exchanges.
Vincent Liu, CIO at Kronos Research, said the sell-off was “sparked by US-China tariff fears but fueled by institutional over-leverage.”
Meanwhile, Brian Strugats from Multicoin Capital warned that the market is now watching for possible “contagion” risks across firms.
Analysts say Bitcoin’s next key support sits at $100,000. Falling below that, said Caroline Mauron of Orbit Markets, “would signal the end of the past three-year bull cycle.”
Still, some see opportunity in the chaos.
Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, hinted that the crash may have created rare buying opportunities. “Congrats to all you stink bidders,” he wrote. “We won’t be seeing those levels any time soon on many high-quality alts.”
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