The massive fall in most cryptocurrencies that began on Friday evening, 10 October, led to the liquidation of futures positions worth over $19 billion overnight — a record high, according to Coinglass.

What happened?

The market crash and subsequent wave of liquidations came amid US President Donald Trump’s announcement of the imposition of 100 per cent tariffs on goods from China on top of those already in place. He also mentioned possible US export restrictions on “critical software”. The new tariffs are due to take effect “on or before 1 November”, the president wrote on his Truth Social network.

He said the decision is a response to China’s decision to impose sweeping export restrictions on “virtually every product it produces.”

Earlier China tightened control over the export of rare-earth metals. The country is the world’s largest supplier of these elements, which are critical for the production of chips and high-performance equipment.

The market has “bloodied up”

The markets met the news with a massive drop. The S&P 500 index recorded its biggest collapse since April, down 2.7%, the Dow Jones fell 1.9% and the Nasdaq index fell almost 3.6%.

However, events unfolded even more dramatically in the crypto market. Against the backdrop of Trump’s announcement, most crypto assets slumped sharply. Bitcoin fell to $102,000 at one point.

Nevertheless, the fall in the price of the first cryptocurrency is not so massive compared to what altcoins recorded. A lot of assets lost almost half of their price, some falling by as much as 70%. Ethereum collapsed to $3700 (-14% for the day), Solana fell below $175.

At the time of writing, some assets have slightly regained lost positions, but the market has not yet recovered. According to CoinMarketCap, the total capitalisation of cryptocurrencies sagged by almost 10% over the day.

Historical liquidations

The events led to the largest wave of liquidations in history. According to Coinglass, positions of over 1.6 million traders worth over $19 billion were forcibly closed. The lion’s share was longs, over $16 billion.

Hyperliquid had the largest volume of liquidations — $10.3 billion of the total amount. The largest single liquidation occurred on the same platform — the user lost over $203 million.

At the same time, the total amount of losses could be even higher. As Coinglass notes, exchanges do not always transmit information about such transactions in real time. For example, Binance, according to them, publishes a maximum of one liquidation order per second.

It should be noted that against the background of what is happening in the market, exchanges experienced interruptions in work due to high load.

At the time of writing, the Fear and Greed Index is down to 35 points — fear reigns in the market.