Investigación verificada por fuentes: OKX / Binance / Hyperliquid

What happened on 10 October 2025

According to CoinDesk, bitcoin had set a record above $126,000 a few days earlier and had slipped to about $122,600 on the morning of 10 October 2025. Hours later it was below $105,000, with much of the drop coming within minutes in thin Friday-evening US trading after President Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. More than $19 billion of leveraged positions were liquidated that day.

CoinDesk's anniversary piece quotes Mark Connors of Risk Dimensions, who says open interest was near record highs going into the crash and traders were positioned for further gains based on the four-year cycle. In his words, the move "was all derivatives", not on-chain selling. That is the core lesson: in the short term, bitcoin's price can be driven by leveraged positions as much as by demand for the coin itself.

The plumbing a year later: majors deeper, altcoins thinner

CoinDesk Research compared market depth, meaning the value of orders resting near the current price, across major centralized exchanges on four dates: 1 January 2025, 10 October 2025, 1 January 2026 and this week.

Two details matter. First, bitcoin is about a third cheaper than before the crash, so a deeper book in dollar terms means market makers have committed more capital, not that coins got cheaper. Second, the rebuilt books have already been tested: as the market sold off this week, bitcoin's 1% depth fell about 12% between 7 and 8 October, according to CoinDesk.

For altcoins the picture is reversed. Depth measured in tokens looks stable, but CoinDesk's analysts say that is mostly because token prices fell; measured in dollars, committed capital has been eroding since early 2025. A thin book is where a moderate sell order becomes a cascade, which is what happened to many altcoins last October.

What our liquidation and funding data show this weekend

NexuAlpha's liquidation tracker reads Binance's USDT-margined force-order stream, which publishes at most one order per symbol per second, and OKX liquidation orders for BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP and DOGE. Every figure below is therefore a lower bound, not a market total, and the scale is not comparable with the $19 billion market-wide figure from last year.

In the 24 hours to 14:48 UTC on 11 October 2026, our tracker recorded $3.23 million of liquidations across 478 orders: $1.52 million of longs and $1.71 million of shorts, roughly a 47/53 split. The five largest contracts in that window were all on OKX: ETH $1.92 million, BTC $0.54 million, DOGE $0.37 million, SOL $0.32 million and XRP $0.08 million. The largest single order was a $691,999 ETH short on OKX at 04:22 UTC. In the last four hours of the window, almost everything was shorts: $252,818 of $259,243, led by a $158,639 BTC short on OKX at 12:13 UTC.

Funding tells the same story of a market without a crowded side. Binance's settled funding on 11 October at 08:00 UTC was −0.0010% for BTCUSDT and −0.0117% for ETHUSDT per eight hours; ETH had also settled at −0.0118% at 00:00 UTC. At 14:48 UTC, the next BTC payment on Binance was projected at +0.0011% and on OKX at +0.0003%. Compare that with last October, when Connors describes crowded bullish positioning: today neither longs nor shorts are paying much to hold their bets on the majors. The extremes are in smaller tokens. On our funding-rate board, CFX showed −0.036% on Binance and −0.032% on OKX, and RLC −0.188% on Binance, which means shorts in those contracts are paying heavily and are exposed to a squeeze.

Bitcoin traded near $83,100 on Binance at the time, up about 0.1% over 24 hours.

What to watch

• Open interest and funding together. Chris Sullivan of Hyperion Decimus, quoted by CoinDesk, recommends watching open interest, funding and sentiment, and being patient when they reach extremes in either direction.
• Altcoin depth. CoinDesk's data shows altcoin books are thinner in dollar terms than at any of the four dates measured. Liquidation cascades start where books are thin.
• Weekend hours. The 2025 crash unfolded in thin Friday-evening US trading. Weekend and late-night sessions are when a large order moves price the most.
• Spot volume. Spot trading has doubled from its August low but is still far below crash-week levels, according to CoinDesk; leverage-driven moves matter more when spot is quiet.

How to act on this

The practical lesson from last October is simple: lower leverage keeps you off the liquidation list, and isolated margin limits a bad trade to the margin you put in. Before you hold a position overnight, check the funding board and the 24-hour liquidation tracker, and remember that negative funding on small caps like CFX or RLC can squeeze shorts quickly. Fees are the cost you control: if you trade perpetuals on OKX, a regular account pays 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker on USDT perpetuals, and registering with code nexu888 returns 40% of trading fees, settled hourly. If you prefer on-chain perpetuals, Hyperliquid is the largest perp DEX and you can sign up with code NEXU888. See the OKX profile, the Hyperliquid profile and our funding rate explainer.

Quick answers

What caused the October 10, 2025 crypto crash? CoinDesk ties the plunge to President Trump's announcement of 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, hitting a market with near-record open interest and crowded long positions in thin Friday-evening trading.

How much was liquidated on October 10, 2025? More than $19 billion of leveraged positions in a single day, the largest liquidation event in crypto history, according to CoinDesk.

Has crypto liquidity recovered since the crash? For bitcoin and ether, yes: their order books are deeper than on crash day. Altcoin depth and spot volume have not recovered, per CoinDesk Research.

How much was liquidated in the last 24 hours? Our tracker recorded $3.23 million in the 24 hours to 14:48 UTC on 11 October 2026, about 47% longs and 53% shorts, as a lower bound. See /liquidations for the live figure.

Could another October 10 happen? Connors told CoinDesk there is "still a chance", because leveraged products have not gone away. Nobody can time it, which is why position size matters more than prediction.

Limits of this article

Order-book depth and spot volume figures come from CoinDesk Research as published on 10 October 2026; we did not measure them ourselves. Our liquidation feed covers selected contracts on Binance and OKX, records at most one Binance order per symbol per second, and is a lower bound; in this window, the largest contracts it recorded were all on OKX. Funding and price figures were read at about 14:48 UTC on 11 October 2026 and will have changed. This is market data and analysis, not a forecast or investment advice. Partner links may earn NexuAlpha a commission paid by the exchange, at no extra cost to you.