Morning Minute: $19B Wiped Out in Crypto’s Biggest Liquidation Ever

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors green and recovering from Friday’s crash; Bitcoin at $114,100
• Over $19B liquidated from the crypto market on Friday in bloodiest day ever
• Aster team does 100M token buy back, drops updated airdrop checker
• Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 upgrade coming today will unlock permissionless perp market creation
• Polymarket says a token is coming but unlikely in 2025; Kalshi raises at $5B

🧨 A Historic Flush: ~$19B in Crypto Liquidations

Friday wasn’t just a bad day for crypto.

It was the worst day in crypto’s existence.

And all due to a miscommunication at the highest level…

📌 What Happened

The crypto market saw the largest liquidation wave on record on Friday with ~$19B liquidated in 24 hours, as forced unwinds spanned exchanges and Perps protocols.

After President Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Chinese tech and tighter export controls, BTC slid from $118,000 to $101,000 in the span of a few hours.

Alts got absolutely obliterated, with some like SUI falling as much as 80%. ~8–13% intraday and dragged majors with it.

As prices knifed lower, ~$19.1B of positions were liquidated, ~$16.7B of them longs, per CoinDesk.

Hyperliquid was >$1.2B in trader equity vaporized and left 6,300 wallets in the red.

Open interest was wiped by $65B.

Effectively, a full market reset, sending positioning back to midsummer levels.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“Yesterday was the worst liquidation event in crypto history with over $20B+ in liquidations in CeFi and several hundred million in DeFi reported. Market participants are pointing to escalating trade tensions between China and US but it’s almost irrelevant what news caused this.

In one hour, BTC fell -13% from peak to trough. Altcoins losses were even more severe – ATOM fell -100% in the span of an hour to virtually zero. Prices have rebounded from these extreme lows but no doubt there will be bodies left in the wake of this wreckage.” – Jonathan Man, PM at Bitwise

“Rumor mill currently saying two large trading firms were liquidated to zero. Hearing different takes but the idea is they owned a book of top 100 mcap tokens which were collateralized against each other in size ($1B+) & became forced market sellers of their entire book” – Ayyyyeandy on X

🧠 Why It Matters

As the dust settles, we still don’t know exactly what happened.

It seems it was an algorithmically driven selloff which liquidated some major players who were cross-collateralized with assets which all went down 40-80% or more.

Sites like Binance have refunded users $280M+ for issues on their end which led to liquidations. Others haven’t been so lucky.

So what happens from here?

If the “Trade War 2” narrative is totally overblown, we could very well V-shape recover to new ATHs within weeks or even days.

Wiping leverage out of the system is typically a bullish setup for price action going forward, and no real aspect of the macro bull case (the debasement trade) has changed in the past few days.

New ATHs in October are still on the table.

For those who got liquidated, it was a sobering wake up call to the dangers of trading on leverage. The broader perps trade (Hype, Aster, Lighter, etc.) likely took a hit here.

Time will tell.

As for today, let’s hope there are no more miscommunications between Trump and China…



🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are green after Friday’s selloff; BTC +2% at $114,100, ETH +7% at $4,080, BNB +5% at $1,290, SOL +6% at $192
• SNX (+130%), TAO (+29%) and ENA (+16%) led top movers
• $19B in liquidations hit the crypto market during Friday’s flash crash after Trump threatened 100% tariffs on China, which saw Bitcoin fall to $101,000 and several alts down 60-80%
• Binance refunded its impacted users $283M as some of their tokens depegged on Friday
• A consortium of major banks, including Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, and Goldman Sachs, is exploring a jointly issued stablecoin
• The Ethereum Foundation launched a new initiative for funding privacy development
• Coinbase is partnering with American Express to launch a crypto credit card with Bitcoin rewards

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

• Bitcoin miner MARA acquired another 400 BTC during the market crash on Friday
• China’s Renaissance Banks is in talks to raise $600M for a BNB Treasury

In Memes

• Memecoin leaders are green and rebounding after Friday’s selloff; DOGE +8%, Shiba +7%, PEPE +11%, PENGU +13%, BONK +14%, TRUMP +5%, SPX +16%, and FARTCOIN +17%
• USELESS rebounded nearly 100% off Friday’s lows, back to $385M; ZEREBRO (+48%), Tokabu (+50%) and VINE (+35%) led other Solana movers
• 4 rebounded 30% to $170M leading movers on BSC

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• Kalshi raised at a $5 billion valuation from Coinbase, CapitalG, a16z, and Paradigm, with Sequoia also participating
• Polymarket won’t release its token until it has fully entered the US market
• Aster announced a 100M ASTER buyback on Friday, and also opened up its refreshed airdrop checker ahead of new Oct 20 airdrop date
• Hyperliquid announced a network upgrade today for HIP 3

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• NFT leaders were mostly green after a weekend crash; Punks +1% at 47 ETH, Pudgy +6% at 7.45, BAYC +8% at 7.75 ETH; Hypurr’s +13% at 1,248 HYPE
• Quine (+45%) and Chimpers (+20%) were notable top movers
• Punk Strategy’s PNKSTR token rebounded to $140M after selling off to $100M in Friday’s crash
• RTFKT co-founder Benoit Pagotto passed away yesterday at the age of 41

Source