In 2025, the total volume of forced liquidations of margin-based trading positions on cryptocurrency exchanges approached $150 billion, according to a Coinglass report. The estimated average daily liquidation rate throughout the year ranged from $400 million to $500 million.
This refers to the nominal value of positions including leverage (a $100 position with 10x leverage counts as $1000 in the total loss amount), but even with this adjustment, the scale of the losses remains impressive.
Nearly 15% of the annual liquidation volume occurred in a single day—on the night of October 11th, when the crypto market experienced the largest cascade of futures position liquidations in history, with a total volume of nearly $20 billion. This set an absolute record for the volume of forcibly closed trading positions on cryptocurrency exchanges.
The event occurred against the backdrop of U.S. President Donald Trump announcing new 100% tariffs on imports from China, as well as export controls on critical software. This sharply increased expectations of a new trade war, as Coinglass writes, which forced markets into a "risk-off" mode, meaning a retreat from high-risk assets, including Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Experts note that the scale of the consequences was determined not only by external factors but also by the structure of the leverage used and the functioning of liquidation mechanisms. During exchange overload, Auto-Deleveraging (ADL) mechanisms were triggered, and trades were executed at unfavorable prices, causing losses even for profitable traders.
Bitcoin and Ethereum lost 10–15% at their peak, while many altcoins collapsed by 80% or more.
The Coinglass report stated that the crash of that day revealed key market vulnerabilities: reliance on opaque liquidation mechanisms, the fragility of infrastructure under peak loads, and the lack of effective circuit breakers that exist on traditional exchanges.
Unlike the crash of the Terra (LUNA) project in 2022, this collapse did not lead to a series of defaults by institutional investors. The risks were not systemic and were concentrated in specific strategies and assets, noted Coinglass.
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