Crypto liquidations continued their early morning rout in Asia hours after the broader crypto market continued its slide hours after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Chinese imports via a Truth Social post, sparking a global wave of risk aversion and wiping out more than $16 billion in long positions as of noon Hong time Kong.
Trader anxiety over the cooling trade war was about to reignite, causing a macroeconomic shock that rippled through crypto, triggering one of the largest long declines in the prices of BTC, ETH and other digital assets seen all year.
Bitcoin recovered to $113,294 and Ether to $3,844 as the CoinDesk 20 index slipped 12.1%. The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly fell below $110,000, marking a 10% decline in the past 24 hours.
Crypto’s total market cap fell to $3.87 trillion, and about $16.7 billion of the $19.1 billion in liquidations came from long positions, while Ethena’s USDe briefly printed $0.9996, a slight gap that highlights the anchoring tension when derivatives markets collapse.
Friday’s crash was the worst crypto selloff in terms of pure volume, with the dollar value liquidated more than 10 times that of crashes when FTX collapsed in 2022 or when global markets collapsed during early COVID lockdowns. Percentage-wise, Friday’s crash is much smaller, considering the crypto market’s overall growth since 2022.
Covid crash: $1.2 billion in liquidations
FTX crash: $1.6 billion in liquidations
Today: $19.16 billion in liquidations
This is the largest liquidation event in crypto history and almost 20 times larger than the March 2020 Covid crash. pic.twitter.com/avCSRK3l53
– Ash Crypto (@Ashcryptoreal) October 11, 2025
CoinGlass said in an article on
The Ethena team said USDe minting and redemptions remain fully operational despite the volatility and highlighted that the stablecoin is becoming even more over-extended as unrealized gains on short positions are realized.
Adding to traders’ concerns, the U.S. government shutdown has delayed the release of key economic data, leaving markets without official indicators just as trade war rhetoric returns to center stage.
UPDATE (October 11, 2025, 04:00 UTC): Adds context on the importance of Friday’s liquidations.
UPDATE (October 11, 04:20 UTC): Adds a CoinGlass note.
