This was the largest liquidation event in crypto history, doing a follow up with some insights from the terminal
initial reports of $19B were later revised to $19.3B confirmed, with estimates reaching $30-40B when accounting for underreported data from exchange API throttling.
So what actually happened?
Trump announced 100% tariffs on China starting November 1st. Multiple whales opened massive short positions 30 minutes to 1 hour before the announcement, suggesting insider trading.
- $300M $BTC short opened 1 hour before
- Another trader made $88M-$200M shorting BTC and $ETH
- $1.1B in $XRP shorts opened 30 minutes before the crash
The Cascade:
- 1.66M traders liquidated in 24 hours
- Largest single liquidation: $203M ETH-USDT on Hyperliquid
- BTC briefly touched $100-102K before recovering to $112-113K (-8.3% now)
- ETH swung from $3,400 to $4,400 in 30 minutes, down -12% overall
- Altcoins crashed 40-95% vs Bitcoin's 10% decline
Collateral Damage:
- $USDe depegged to $0.62-0.65, triggering secondary liquidation waves
- Gas fees spiked to $350 per swap on Ethereum
- Order books completely wiped on CEXes - $APTOS crashed 85%, $SEI 75%, $RENDER 86%
- Multiple flash crashes to near-zero: $ATOM, $TIA, $AVAX all touched sub-$1 on thin liquidity
During this turmoil, our cluster data shows a few resilient protocols:
- Record volumes across Aave, Pendle, Curve, 1inch ($1.23B in 24h swaps)
- @DriftProtocol: $70M liquidations, zero bankruptcies
- @aave: Oracle pricing saved $4.5B in positions and $180M in liquidation penalties
- @MorphoLabs: $43.7M liquidations across 4 chains with effectively zero bad debt
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