More Than $19 Billion Liquidated in Crypto’s Oct. 10 Shock

More than $19 billion in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated during the 24 hours following the Oct. 10, 2025, sell-off, but the shock did not halt the market’s expansion into tokenization and regulated collateral.

Bitcoin (BTC) fell from about $122,000 to the low $106,000s before rebounding. About 1.62 million accounts were liquidated, with long positions accounting for approximately 87% of the total. Hyperliquid and Bybit represented 75% of reported liquidations, while Hyperliquid activated auto-deleveraging for the first time in more than two years.

The sell-off exposed the risks of thin liquidity and highly leveraged derivatives positions. Tokens other than BTC and Ether (ETH) fell about 33% within 25 minutes, and some assets on Binance briefly traded at steep discounts.

Ethena’s USDe traded near $0.65 on Binance during the disruption. Binance said USDe, BNSOL and wBETH experienced a depeg between 5:36 and 6:16 p.m. ET (21:36–22:16 UTC) on Oct. 10 and announced compensation for affected futures, margin and loan users.

The compensation was to be based on the difference between each asset’s market price at 8 p.m. ET (00:00 UTC on Oct. 11) and the user’s liquidation price.

The market’s subsequent development included new regulatory programs for crypto-based collateral and tokenized securities. On Dec. 8, 2025, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission launched a pilot allowing Bitcoin, Ether and USDC to serve as collateral in derivatives markets.

The Securities and Exchange Commission described tokenized securities in a Jan. 28, 2026, statement as securities whose ownership records are maintained partly or entirely on crypto networks. On Sept. 17, 2026, the agency issued temporary conditional exemptions allowing certain tokenized securities venues to trade tokenized National Market System stocks in permissioned environments.

Lucas Tcheyan, vice president of research, said, “In retrospect, it’s looking more and more like a blip in crypto’s longer growth trajectory.”