$19B Crypto Liquidations Wipe Out 1.6M Traders

On Oct. 10-11, 2025, an estimated $19 billion in leveraged cryptocurrency positions were liquidated in roughly 24 hours, affecting about 1.6 million traders after President Trump announced a 100% tariff on Chinese imports. Approximately $16.7 billion of the losses came from long positions.

Most derivative trading took place in perpetual futures, contracts that allow traders to control large exposures with a fraction of capital posted as margin. Exchanges automatically close positions when losses exceed maintenance margin. Those automatic closures execute at market prices and can push prices lower, triggering additional automatic closures in sequence.

Exchanges operate insurance funds to cover positions that move underwater faster than they can be closed. When those funds are depleted, platforms use auto-deleveraging to reduce positions on the profitable side to balance books. Forced liquidations that execute into thin order books can produce short, steep price swings.

Total perpetual futures open interest across major exchanges fell from about $217 billion to $123 billion in a day, a 43% decline. Decentralized venue Hyperliquid saw open interest drop from $14 billion to $6 billion, a 57% decline. Some market participants estimated undisclosed positions could raise the true liquidation total toward $30 billion to $40 billion. For the full year 2025, analysts recorded more than $150 billion in liquidations.

Leverage rebuilt after the October event and 2026 produced several large liquidation days. On Jan. 20, 2026, more than 182,000 traders lost about $1.08 billion in a single day, largely in long bitcoin and ethereum futures. On Feb. 1, an episode referred to as ‘Black Sunday II’ saw roughly $2.2 billion in forced closures within 24 hours, affecting more than 335,000 accounts. Ethereum futures accounted for about $961 million of those liquidations, bitcoin about $679 million and Solana about $168 million. About 80%–85% of the losses were long positions.

In June 2026, spot bitcoin fell from roughly $67,000 to $59,100 over 48 hours and triggered more than $3 billion in forced liquidations across that window, including a single worst day near $1.8 billion.

Funding rates, the periodic payments between long and short traders, tended to spike when positioning was crowded. Open interest rebuilt after each major liquidation episode in 2026, restoring levels of leveraged exposure that analysts and traders identified as conditions that could lead to future cascades when a new triggering event occurs.