Crypto sell-offs continued their early morning plunge in Asia, hours after the broader cryptocurrency market continued its decline hours after US President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Chinese imports via a Truth Social post, triggering a global wave of risk aversion and wiping out more than $16 billion in long positions at noon Hong Kong time.
Trader anxiety that a cooling trade war was about to reignite sparked a macro shock that rippled through cryptocurrencies, triggering one of the largest prolonged declines in the prices of BTC, ETH and other digital assets seen all year.
Bitcoin recovered to $113,294 and Ether to $3,844 as the CoinDesk 20 index fell 12.1%. The world’s largest cryptocurrency had briefly fallen below $110,000, marking a 10% drop in the last 24 hours.
The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies fell to $3.87 trillion, and about $16.7 billion of the $19.1 billion in liquidations came from long positions, while Ethena’s USDe briefly printed $0.9996, a slight deviation that highlights pegging stress when derivatives markets swung.
Friday’s crash saw the worst sell-off in cryptocurrencies in terms of pure volume, with a sell-off of more than 10 times more dollar value than the drops when FTX collapsed in 2022 or when global markets collapsed during the first COVID lockdowns. On a percentage level, Friday’s drop is much less significant, given how much the overall crypto market has grown since 2022.
Covid accident: $1.2 billion in settlements
FTX crash: $1.6 billion in liquidations
Today: $19.16 billion in settlements
This is the largest liquidation event in cryptocurrency history and almost 20 times larger than the March 2020 Covid crash. pic.twitter.com/avCSRK3l53
– Ash Crypto (@Ashcryptoreal) October 11, 2025
CoinGlass said in a post on
The Ethena team said USDe minting and redemptions remained fully operational despite the volatility and noted that the stablecoin is even more overcollateralized as unrealized profits are made from short positions.
Adding to traders’ concerns, the US government shutdown has delayed the release of key economic data, leaving markets navigating without official indicators just as trade war rhetoric returns to center stage.
UPDATE (October 11, 2025, 04:00 UTC): Adds context on the importance of Friday settlements.
UPDATE (October 11, 04:20 UTC): Add a CoinGlass note.
