Crypto traders suffered heavy losses just days after Bitcoin’s price hit an all-time high, a volatility largely driven by the latest round of tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.
Crypto prices fell on Friday, October 10, after Trump announced additional 100% tariffs on China and controls on software exports.
The declines accelerated and were exacerbated by what Coinglass, a comprehensive data platform that provides analytical tools for crypto traders, described as the largest liquidation in crypto history.
Trump’s announcement of tariffs led to a more than 12% decline in Bitcoin’s price, which traded below $113,000 on Saturday morning, October 11, after having surpassed $125,000 earlier in the week, its all-time high.
“The renewed outbreak of a trade war between China and the US on Friday has caused market uncertainty and a sharp decline in riskier assets, most notably cryptocurrencies,” said Ravi Doshi, Associate Markets Partner at broker FalconX.
David Jeong, CEO of institutional crypto exchange tread.fi, told Bloomberg:
The market is experiencing an unexpected event. Many institutions did not anticipate this level of volatility, and with the design of leveraged perpetual futures contracts, many large traders, including institutions, were liquidated.
Trader liquidation
According to CoinGlass data, in just 24 hours, bets worth more than $19 billion were canceled, and more than 1.6 million traders were liquidated. The platform indicated that more than $7 billion of these positions were liquidated in less than an hour on Friday.
In a post on the X platform, it added that “the numbers may be much higher, as exchanges do not report all orders in real time,” noting that Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, records approximately one liquidation order every second.
“The focus now is on the extent of the losses suffered by major platforms and institutions, and whether this will lead to market contagion,” said Brian Strogatz, head of spot trading at FalconX, explaining that some estimates indicate that the total liquidation could exceed $30 billion.
According to Caroline Moron, co-founder of Orbit Markets, a digital asset derivatives trading firm, the next major support level for Bitcoin is $100,000. She told Bloomberg that “a drop below this level would signal the end of the three-year bull run.”
Decline of other coins
According to CoinMarketCap data, other major cryptocurrencies also saw sharp declines, with Ethereum falling 9% to below $3,400, Solana falling 14%, and Ripple losing more than 8% of its value on the same day.
Bitcoin hit a record high on Monday, October 6, when it rose 2.8% to $126,251, prompting options traders to increase their bets on the world’s largest cryptocurrency to $140,000, before markets tumbled within days.
