Bitcoin alone witnessed a $20,000 daily swing and erased $380 billion in market capitalization in a single day. This liquidation surpassed all previous records by nearly tenfold, surpassing records set during the FTX collapse and the March 2020 crash.
Data across major exchanges confirmed that the sell-off was heavily one-sided. Out of the $19.38 billion in total liquidations, $16.7 billion came from long positions, which is a 6.7-to-1 ratio compared to shorts. Nearly every exchange, from Binance to Bybit, saw over 90% of liquidations hitting longs, with Hyperliquid alone recording $10.3 billion.
The reason behind the crash can be attributed to a mix of extended market corrections following Bitcoin’s all-time high and rising tensions over new US tariffs on China. According to The Kobeissi Letter, the selloff unfolded through a series of perfectly timed events that tied geopolitical shocks to fragile market sentiment.
Trump’s tariff post dropped late on a Friday after US markets had closed, but the crypto market was wide open. As such, crypto prices fell into a vacuum as volume spiked, creating the perfect setup for one of the fastest collapses in crypto history. By 5:20 PM, total liquidations had reached $19.5 billion, and the whale closed positions for a $192 million profit.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin has recovered a bit from its plunge and is now trading at $111,790.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
