Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.
🧨 A Historic Flush: ~$19B in Crypto Liquidations
Friday wasn’t just a bad day for crypto.
It was the worst day in crypto’s existence.
And all due to a miscommunication at the highest level…
📌 What Happened
The crypto market saw the largest liquidation wave on record on Friday with ~$19B liquidated in 24 hours, as forced unwinds spanned exchanges and Perps protocols.
After President Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Chinese tech and tighter export controls, BTC slid from $118,000 to $101,000 in the span of a few hours.
Alts got absolutely obliterated, with some like SUI falling as much as 80%. ~8–13% intraday and dragged majors with it.
As prices knifed lower, ~$19.1B of positions were liquidated, ~$16.7B of them longs, per CoinDesk.
Hyperliquid was >$1.2B in trader equity vaporized and left 6,300 wallets in the red.
Open interest was wiped by $65B.
Effectively, a full market reset, sending positioning back to midsummer levels.
🗣️ What They’re Saying
“Yesterday was the worst liquidation event in crypto history with over $20B+ in liquidations in CeFi and several hundred million in DeFi reported. Market participants are pointing to escalating trade tensions between China and US but it’s almost irrelevant what news caused this.
In one hour, BTC fell -13% from peak to trough. Altcoins losses were even more severe – ATOM fell -100% in the span of an hour to virtually zero. Prices have rebounded from these extreme lows but no doubt there will be bodies left in the wake of this wreckage.” – Jonathan Man, PM at Bitwise
“Rumor mill currently saying two large trading firms were liquidated to zero. Hearing different takes but the idea is they owned a book of top 100 mcap tokens which were collateralized against each other in size ($1B+) & became forced market sellers of their entire book” – Ayyyyeandy on X
🧠 Why It Matters
As the dust settles, we still don’t know exactly what happened.
It seems it was an algorithmically driven selloff which liquidated some major players who were cross-collateralized with assets which all went down 40-80% or more.
Sites like Binance have refunded users $280M+ for issues on their end which led to liquidations. Others haven’t been so lucky.
So what happens from here?
If the “Trade War 2” narrative is totally overblown, we could very well V-shape recover to new ATHs within weeks or even days.
Wiping leverage out of the system is typically a bullish setup for price action going forward, and no real aspect of the macro bull case (the debasement trade) has changed in the past few days.
New ATHs in October are still on the table.
For those who got liquidated, it was a sobering wake up call to the dangers of trading on leverage. The broader perps trade (Hype, Aster, Lighter, etc.) likely took a hit here.
Time will tell.
As for today, let’s hope there are no more miscommunications between Trump and China…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes
A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- Crypto majors are green after Friday’s selloff; BTC +2% at $114,100, ETH +7% at $4,080, BNB +5% at $1,290, SOL +6% at $192
- SNX (+130%), TAO (+29%) and ENA (+16%) led top movers
- $19B in liquidations hit the crypto market during Friday’s flash crash after Trump threatened 100% tariffs on China, which saw Bitcoin fall to $101,000 and several alts down 60-80%
- Binance refunded its impacted users $283M as some of their tokens depegged on Friday
- A consortium of major banks, including Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, and Goldman Sachs, is exploring a jointly issued stablecoin
- The Ethereum Foundation launched a new initiative for funding privacy development
- Coinbase is partnering with American Express to launch a crypto credit card with Bitcoin rewards
In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs
In Memes
- Memecoin leaders are green and rebounding after Friday’s selloff; DOGE +8%, Shiba +7%, PEPE +11%, PENGU +13%, BONK +14%, TRUMP +5%, SPX +16%, and FARTCOIN +17%
- USELESS rebounded nearly 100% off Friday’s lows, back to $385M; ZEREBRO (+48%), Tokabu (+50%) and VINE (+35%) led other Solana movers
- 4 rebounded 30% to $170M leading movers on BSC
💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker
Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:
🚚 What is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs: