Last night, the cryptocurrency market experienced one of the largest series of liquidations in its history, with an estimated $20 billion lost. It was a veritable bloodbath, with some altcoins falling 90% over this period. Here’s an overview of the situation.
$20 billion in liquidations… at least
It’s a difficult wake-up call at the start of the weekend. The cryptocurrency market has just experienced a historic collapse overnight, following Donald Trump’s announcement that he would impose a 100% tariff on Chinese imports. This was in response to Beijing’s announcement that it would veto the export of all products containing more than 0.1% of rare earths of Chinese origin.
As a result, the futures market has taken a hit, with total liquidations reaching $19.3 billion over the last 24 hours, according to the tracking site Coinglass. However, some analysts are talking about much higher figures, which are often underestimated by exchanges and could exceed $30 billion in total.
Among the most affected cryptocurrency exchange platforms, DEX Hyperliquid has the highest amount of liquidations, with more than $10 billion on its own. Next come Bybit ($4.465 billion) and Binance ($2.39 billion) to close out this sad podium.
Of course, long positions—those betting on an increase—were the most affected, accounting for over 90% of the total. In total, nearly 1.7 million traders were liquidated during this period, with the largest liquidation recorded on the decentralized platform Hyperliquid ($203 million), with an ETH-USDT position.
A real bloodbath for altcoins
A downturn in the cryptocurrency market briefly pushed the price of Bitcoin below $105,000, following a flash crash of more than 15%. This result is nevertheless quite respectable, considering the veritable bloodbath that affected the altcoin market over the same period.
Indeed, the rest of the cryptocurrency market saw a series of collapses, with spectacular declines reaching peaks of 60% for LINK and DOGE and more than 70% for ONDO. At the same time, the very popular HYPE posted a decline of more than 50%.
In the space of a few hours, the altcoin market—TOTAL2 excluding BTC—wiped $430 billion off its total capitalization, reaching $1.24 trillion. This decline had already been partially offset at the time of writing, with the amount returning to around $1.45 trillion, representing a reduction of $220 billion.
At the time of writing, the situation appears to be stabilizing, with declines still ranging from 5% (TRX) to 22% (DOGE) for the top 10 cryptocurrencies. The question remains as to how the market will manage to erase this record decline in the coming weeks.
Amidst this collapse, suspicions of insider trading are surfacing. This is particularly true in relation to a trader who was clearly well-advised—or well-informed—and who took advantage of this opportunity to “make around $190 to $200 million in profit in a single day on Hyperliquid,” according to data published by the X MLM account. Some transactions took place “just minutes before the cascade of liquidations began.” And that may only be the tip of the iceberg.
