One tariff post met $217B of open interest — $19B liquidated in a day

On Friday 10 October 2025, President Trump threatened an additional 100% tariff on imports from China. Crypto markets had been building to that moment with roughly $217 billion of open interest — a record — traders holding leverage of up to 100x, and order books already 30–40% thinner heading into the weekend.

The selloff became a cascade: forced selling pushed prices down, which triggered more liquidations across cross-margined accounts. At the peak, $3.2 billion of positions were liquidated in a single minute. By CNN's tally $18.28 billion had been wiped out by mid-afternoon US time; total liquidations over the day reached about $19 billion across 1.6 million accounts — the largest liquidation event in crypto history, roughly nine times any previous one. Bitcoin fell about 10–14%, touching roughly $103,000; ether fell 14–20% and Solana nearly 20%.

Market structure made it worse. On Binance, the stablecoin USDe briefly traded at $0.65 — a depeg driven by the exchange's internal pricing rather than outside oracles — triggering a second wave of liquidations. Market makers withdrew, bids disappeared, and several exchanges buckled, trapping traders in losing positions. Binance later pledged more than $283 million in compensation for failed executions and accelerated a move to oracle-based pricing.