Binance СEO Teng defends exchange for Oct. 2025 crash

Speaking at Consensus Hong Kong, Teng said the Oct. 10 selloff produced about $19 billion in crypto liquidations and that the pattern was broad-based rather than exchange-specific. He pointed to the scale of risk-off moves in traditional markets that day as part of his argument that crypto was reacting to wider conditions.

Teng said the most intense phase of forced selling was tightly time-clustered. He put about 75% of liquidations at around 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, coinciding with what he described as two separate, temporary frictions: a stablecoin depegging and slower-than-usual asset transfers that complicated positioning and margin management across venues.

In Teng’s account, Binance did not see evidence of a generalized user run during the episode. He said internal trading and withdrawal data did not show mass withdrawals and added that Binance provided support to users affected by extreme volatility, framing the event as a systemic deleveraging rather than a platform-driven failure.

Independent post-mortems published after the Oct. 10 crash also emphasized how leverage and cross-venue plumbing can amplify price moves once liquidations begin. CoinShares’ analysis of the episode described a liquidation wave that followed tariff-related headlines and noted sharp, rapid drawdowns in major assets alongside abrupt dislocations in smaller tokens, underscoring how forced selling can cascade once open interest is elevated and liquidity thins.

Market-structure data from CoinDesk Data’s reference-rate team highlighted another stress point that tends to surface during liquidation events: pricing fragmentation. In an Oct. 28, 2025 analysis of the “largest liquidation event,” CoinDesk Data said the crash revealed significant fragmentation across exchanges, including isolated drawdowns on some venues that were not mirrored elsewhere, which can complicate liquidations, risk checks, and index-based pricing during fast markets. 

The Oct. 10 shock reverberated beyond that single session. A subsequent market update described a rebound in major tokens after the liquidation wave, framing the episode as the largest liquidation event tracked by CoinGlass at the time and reinforcing how quickly liquidity conditions can flip from disorderly selling to stabilization once leverage is cleared.

Teng used the Feb. 12 remarks to push back against narratives that pinned Oct. 10’s liquidations on Binance alone, emphasizing that liquidations were visible across the industry’s major trading venues. His comments placed the event in a macro-driven context and tied the timing of liquidations to a short window when stablecoin pricing and transfer throughput were under strain.

The exchange executive also pointed to Binance’s scale in defending its market role, citing the platform’s user base and annual trading volumes as evidence of deep liquidity and ongoing activity even as markets cycle through high-volatility phases.

The Oct. 10 episode remains a reference point for how quickly crypto’s leveraged positioning can unwind when macro headlines collide with operational frictions such as transfer slowdowns or temporary stablecoin dislocations. With Teng now describing the event as broad-based and time-clustered, the key factual debate for market participants centers on mechanics: how liquidations propagated across venues, how fragmented prices became in the worst minutes, and how exchange-level risk systems behaved when margin calls hit at scale.