Cryptocurrency liquidations continued their early morning course in Asia hours after the broader cryptocurrency market continued to fall hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports via a Truth Social post, sparking a global wave of risk aversion and wiping out more than $16 billion of long positions by midday Hong Kong time.
Traders’ concern that the cold trade war was about to reignite sent a macro shockwave rippling through cryptocurrencies, leading to one of the largest prolonged declines in the prices of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets seen all year.
Bitcoin rebounded to $113,294 and Ethereum to $3,844, as the CoinDesk 20 fell 12.1%. The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly fell below $110,000, registering a 10% decline over the past 24 hours.
Crypto’s total market capitalization fell to $3.87 trillion, with nearly $16.7 billion of the $19.1 billion in liquidations coming from long positions, while the US dollar on Ethena briefly hit $0.9996, a slight deflection that highlights peg pressure when derivatives markets swing.
Friday’s crash marked the worst crypto liquidation in terms of pure volume, seeing more than 10 times the value of the dollar liquidated like the crashes when FTX collapsed in 2022 or when global markets collapsed during the early coronavirus lockdowns. On a percentage level, Friday’s crash is much less significant, given how much the overall cryptocurrency market has grown since 2022.
Covid Crash: $1.2 Billion in Liquidations
FTX Crash: $1.6 Billion Liquidations
Today: $19.16 billion in liquidations
This is the largest liquidation event in cryptocurrency history and approximately 20 times larger than the March 2020 Covid collapse. pic.twitter.com/avCSRK3l53
— Ash Crypto (@Ashcryptoreal) October 11, 2025
CoinGlass said in a post on
The Ethena team said that minting and redeeming USDe remained fully operational despite the volatility and noted that the stablecoin has become more collateral with unrealized gains from short positions.
Adding to traders’ concerns, the US government shutdown has delayed key economic data releases, leaving markets coasting without official indicators just as trade war rhetoric returns to center stage.
Updated (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.