7 ms·

$19B Wiped Out in Crypto's Biggest Liquidation

61 points by paulpauper 1y ago

josefritzishere 1y ago
Biggest crash in the history of crypto. I'm surprised this isn't on network news.
- ramesh31 1y ago
  >Biggest crash in the history of crypto. I'm surprised this isn't on network news. In dollar terms sure, but it's a meaningless blip percentage wise. The NASDAQ shed more than its entire market cap in the 2000s this year in a few days and it went right back up. We are in a fantasy world where numbers don't mean anything anymore.
- bdcravens 1y ago
  A lot of the value was wiped out from non-Bitcoin, and the percentages weren't the biggest, only the absolute value.
exabrial 1y ago
Am I missing something obvious? Bitcoin has moved between 120k <--> 110K pretty much continuously since July. I don't really see the move Friday as a huge deal (in the scope of the Wild West crypto is), looks like business as usual.
- postflopclarity 1y ago
  it happened really fast so a lot of positions were liquidated automatically by force, rather than voluntarily by the user. that's really the main distinction
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    These things happen when too many participants are leveraged... Not that I feel sad for them. They took a gamble where sometimes they do lose...
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  It's a big deal from the standpoint that tether stepped in, printed ~ a billion USDT over the past three days, and prevented further plunging. Someone should investigate that... Reminder, if you're invested in crypto long term, you'd better say a prayer every night that Tether is actually backed by ~$180B of liquidity.
  - scotty79 1y ago
    Assuming it happened, if Tether didn't de-peg due to this then it was probably the right thing to do. If they printed it and bought BTC in the dip they are massively ahead since BTC already regained a third of what it lost in the wipe.
  - sidewndr46 1y ago
    Does anyone actually believe that Tether is backed by anything? I know there are at least a few companies that have to pretend Tether is backed by something. But I can't really believe anyone saying it. It'd be sort of like if someone just declared Madoff never really ran Ponzi scheme. It was just a big misunderstanding. Furthermore does it even really matter if Tether is backed by anything? My understanding is they've always maintained an absolute veto on any redemption. So tehter could be backed by Trillions in assets and it'd be irrelevant.
    - candiddevmike 1y ago
      Tether is the defacto central bank for Bitcoin. Since iFinex isn't a country, doesn't have a GDP, and doesn't have a military, MMT doesn't really apply to them. So yes, it's very important, especially during a significant Bitcoin contraction. Tether represents 8% of Bitcoin's (liquid) market cap, and BTC's market cap is already overly inflated due to wash trading.
    - monerozcash 1y ago
      At this point there's no reason to pretend that Tether isn't likely fully backed, they're printing absurd amounts of money without any need for fraud. This is the most profitable business in the world by many metrics.
- bluecalm 1y ago
  The wild moves occurred on alt coins, some went down 80%. Mr. President's own World Liberty Financial for example went down from 18c to even 6c in an instant.
  - exabrial 1y ago
    That too seems like business as usual though?
    - tim333 1y ago
      Not really. It was the biggest such crash ever.
- wmf 1y ago
  There was a flash crash down to ~$104K that wiped out leveraged traders. Liquidation cascades are relatively uncommon and the last one was in 2021 IIRC.
- scotty79 1y ago
  Yeah, the commotion is a bit silly. "The crash" basically brought the price of BTC to the level it was comfortably at two weeks ago. I think disproportional media interest in last two weeks of appreciation and "the crash" is a failed attempt to finally kickstart this BTC bull or bear market. Somebody is getting impatient with last two years of steady growth.
- factorialboy 1y ago
  For long-term holders, this hardly matters. The real story here is insider trading and corruption by people close to President Trump, who knew, down to the exact minute, when to short BTC and ETH. BTC, meanwhile, being a scarce asset, will recover as fiat supply increases with time.
  - thehappypm 1y ago
    Is insider trading even illegal with bitcoin?
    - wmf 1y ago
      Insider trading of Bitcoin is illegal under CFTC regulations. It won't be enforced because crime is legal though.
    - factorialboy 1y ago
      This President, too, will pardon his son and the rest of their family. So, it doesn't really matter if it's a crime or not.
  - crowbahr 1y ago
    Yeah insider traders opening new accounts just over 1 day before, putting tens of millions into those accounts as shorts and stopping right before the president's announcement (to the second in some cases) meaning they walked away with hundreds of millions... It's obvious, it's out in the open, and nobody will prosecute it.
- smcleod 1y ago
  It's not really bitcoin but the huge alt coin market much of which dropped 60%+ in just two hours.
- kkfx 1y ago
  Nowadays many like 100-1000× leverage, with no real stoploss strategy and with significant portion of their capitals. The pump of ZCash also prove some like to clean their history (nowadays that Monero was attacked to crash Houthis international trades). It's business as usual for those who know the business, many are newcomers.
dboreham 1y ago
Why does "orange guy doing random thing" cause Bitcoin to go down in value? I mean, whatever the random thing was, it seems to have nothing whatever to do with Bitcoin.
- stavros 1y ago
  I guess because it's random things that cause anything to go up or down nowadays, so it fits.
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  Because Bitcoin is far, far more correlated with the stock market than the proponents want to admit. Notice that gold didn't budge, "digital gold" my ass. When folks get scared, pure speculation instruments like BTC will tank.
  - liquidise 1y ago
    Gold fell on Friday and recovered over the weekend. BTC certainly remains a more speculative asset than physical gold, but the comparison is not as unhinged as you make it sound.
    - nutjob2 1y ago
      Gold is the, uh, gold standard of safety bets and has run up lately to due comprehensive craziness around the world and especially in the US. How is BTC not the exact opposite of gold? It has no fundamentals whatsoever, no uses outside its transactability, and is widely used to speculate.
      - liquidise 1y ago
        > How is BTC not the exact opposite of gold? If BTC is the exact opposite of gold, it follows that Eth, Ripple, USDC, etc are all more gold-like than BTC. I'd be interested to hear why you believe that to be true. BTC is a coin with longer investments and does not fluctuate as much as other cryptocoins (by %). It has a known supply (past, present and future) and predictable mining rate. It has a known finite future supply cap. To be clear i don't believe BTC is a perfect gold analog. But if you have to pick the "most gold-like" digital asset, it would make my short list.
daft_pink 1y ago
Shocker. At least tulip bulbs could be planted.
- tantalor 1y ago
  Fun fact: they're edible too > In addition to the rationing system, the government provided food through soup kitchens in the cities. As the intensity of the famine increased, the reliance on soup kitchens increased. In April 1945, 1.8 million people in the cities were served daily. One pint of soup per person was the normal ration. The quality of the soup deteriorated over time and some people considered it inedible. The caloric content of a soup ration diminished from 483 calories to 268 calories. The soup served was often made from sugar beets, tulip bulbs, and potato peels. Pet dogs and cats were sometimes eaten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongerwinter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongerwinter
  - hvb2 1y ago
    Way of topic but quoting the hongerwinter as a 'fun fact'.... Wow...
- drcode 1y ago
  Just give us a date/year/etc in which you think the value of bitcoin will go to zero If you are unable to do that, then you implicitly agree, as pretty much everyone does now, that bitcoin has an intrinsic market value that will remain over an indefinite time horizon
  - specialist 1y ago
    price != value
  - ASalazarMX 1y ago
    > Just give us a date/year/etc in which you think the value of bitcoin will go to zero So you can take advantage of the market? No way, only insiders are allowed to do that. I could change your question: Do you think possible that the value of bitcoin will go to zero? If yes, you implicitly agree that it's fueled by speculation and a Ponzi scheme that needs a constant influx of fresh, if boring, fiat currency.
grues-dinner 1y ago
"Miscommunication" is when you see mineral water on the bill when you thought it was tap water. Being that ignorant of the positions during a trade war that you started and doing it in public on Twitter is more like holding Uno cards face-out during your own game of poker. > Amid the market's downturn on Friday, our view was that the 100% tariff announcement by Trump was a bargaining chip. > After China's statement last night, we believe the odds of Trump's 100% tariff on China going into effect are extremely low. "Does nothing, wins" is getting a bit out of hand: they're going back in time and winning 26 hours before they even start.
scotty79 1y ago
The funniest thing is that BTC is 100k EUR +-5k for some time now and appreciating very slowly and linearly (at the rate about +300% over 2 years). If you see BTC rising faster when you look at its price in dollars you don't see the appreciation of BTC. You see the decline of the dollar.
- lawlessone 1y ago
  Thought i was the only one noticing that , people celebrating the rise in dollars they get for it. Then i check the euro price and it hasn't budged. And it's not like the euro hasn't been inflating.. Is there anything people can actually use to see what's going on ? Gold? eggs?
  - scotty79 1y ago
    Currently, after going through the wave of inflation, that swept the world and originated with overprinted pandemic dollars, euro is pretty much back to its historically more or less stable inflation of ~2% per year on average. It doesn't seem that significant, but sure, gold might also be a good indicator for trying to understand where we are. Although, you can't think of it as a unit of value no more than you can think about bitcoin this way. Gold also appreciates like crazy similarly to bitcoin. Especially now, when people feel like recession is basically ensured so they roll back their investments in more risky assets.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
jmyeet 1y ago
While it's fascinating to watch crypto bros learn exactly why the financial system is like it is, kinda like the kid eating baking chocolate, that's boring. It happens basically every day. What's more interesting is how massive hte insider trader problem is already and it's only going to get worse. At some point it's going to undermine the financial markets themselves because nobody is going to trust it. Libertarians might get mad but financial markets, like all markets, require strong regulation to function. A consequence of the presidential immunity decision is that Trump and his orbiters are allowed to insider trade with absolutely no repercussions. If somebody in his orbit does get in trouble, no problem. Just sell another pardon. The US control and influence over the global financial system is a key pillar of its global power. As much as we might hear platitudes like "America First", this administration has done more to destroy the global power and influence of the US than any in living memory and it's not even close.
unit149 1y ago
[dead]
walterbell 1y ago
https://www.cryptopolitan.com/hackers-used-binance-to-crash-crypto-market/ https://www.cryptopolitan.com/hackers-used-binance-to-crash-... - Hackers likely exploited a Binance collateral loophole in its Unified Account system to trigger mass liquidations on October 11. - Collateral assets USDE, wBETH, and BnSOL crashed sharply, wiping out traders and market makers as liquidation prices relied on Binance’s spot order book. - The attack happened between Binance’s oracle update announcement and its implementation, suggesting precise timing and planning. Binance statement: https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/detail/0989d6c7f32545bfb019e3249eaabc3f https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/detail/0989d...
hitekker 1y ago
How could I be able short bitcoin at this point? Asking genuinely but not too seriously.
- HWR_14 1y ago
  Google "ETF short bitcoin". There are some you can just buy like any other publicly traded ticker.
- stouset 1y ago
  Just remember, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  CME has futures and micro futures.
- csomar 1y ago
  You do not short assets like Bitcoin. They can go to irrational levels fast and force you into a liquidation. There is a healthy options market for crypto, try that instead.
sakopov 1y ago
There is a thread on X which unravels the short trade placed hours before Trump's statement and linked it to an individual from Hong Kong https://x.com/eyeonchains/status/1977071983172231507 https://x.com/eyeonchains/status/1977071983172231507
theturtle 1y ago
[dead]
mrlonglong 1y ago
The day Trump announced the tariffs, someone placed an US $100M bet that crypto would crash thirty minutes before the announcement. They made nearly US $200M profit. Someone in the Trump admin is cashing in, and it's not the first time this has happened.
tim333 1y ago
The article doesn't really explain what happened but a lot of the alt coins were bought with borrowed money. When Trump announced the latest 100% tariffs on China the selling caused a lot of alt coins to fall such that traders were stopped out and their coins sold which caused more drops some as much as 99% in a few minutes. Then things bounced back.
Kate5477 1y ago
[dead]
Lumoscore 1y ago
[flagged]
- sph 1y ago
  Excellent use of LLMs to write believable spam and make the Internet shittier for everybody. But posting it under the name of the company you’re trying to push defeats the purpose. Come on, it’s spammers 101.
gilberthelen 1y ago
[dead]

61 points by paulpauper 1y ago

josefritzishere 1y ago

Biggest crash in the history of crypto. I'm surprised this isn't on network news.

ramesh31 1y ago
>Biggest crash in the history of crypto. I'm surprised this isn't on network news. In dollar terms sure, but it's a meaningless blip percentage wise. The NASDAQ shed more than its entire market cap in the 2000s this year in a few days and it went right back up. We are in a fantasy world where numbers don't mean anything anymore.
bdcravens 1y ago
A lot of the value was wiped out from non-Bitcoin, and the percentages weren't the biggest, only the absolute value.

exabrial 1y ago

Am I missing something obvious? Bitcoin has moved between 120k <--> 110K pretty much continuously since July. I don't really see the move Friday as a huge deal (in the scope of the Wild West crypto is), looks like business as usual.

postflopclarity 1y ago
it happened really fast so a lot of positions were liquidated automatically by force, rather than voluntarily by the user. that's really the main distinction
- Ekaros 1y ago
  These things happen when too many participants are leveraged... Not that I feel sad for them. They took a gamble where sometimes they do lose...
candiddevmike 1y ago
It's a big deal from the standpoint that tether stepped in, printed ~ a billion USDT over the past three days, and prevented further plunging. Someone should investigate that... Reminder, if you're invested in crypto long term, you'd better say a prayer every night that Tether is actually backed by ~$180B of liquidity.
- scotty79 1y ago
  Assuming it happened, if Tether didn't de-peg due to this then it was probably the right thing to do. If they printed it and bought BTC in the dip they are massively ahead since BTC already regained a third of what it lost in the wipe.
- sidewndr46 1y ago
  Does anyone actually believe that Tether is backed by anything? I know there are at least a few companies that have to pretend Tether is backed by something. But I can't really believe anyone saying it. It'd be sort of like if someone just declared Madoff never really ran Ponzi scheme. It was just a big misunderstanding. Furthermore does it even really matter if Tether is backed by anything? My understanding is they've always maintained an absolute veto on any redemption. So tehter could be backed by Trillions in assets and it'd be irrelevant.
  - candiddevmike 1y ago
    Tether is the defacto central bank for Bitcoin. Since iFinex isn't a country, doesn't have a GDP, and doesn't have a military, MMT doesn't really apply to them. So yes, it's very important, especially during a significant Bitcoin contraction. Tether represents 8% of Bitcoin's (liquid) market cap, and BTC's market cap is already overly inflated due to wash trading.
  - monerozcash 1y ago
    At this point there's no reason to pretend that Tether isn't likely fully backed, they're printing absurd amounts of money without any need for fraud. This is the most profitable business in the world by many metrics.
bluecalm 1y ago
The wild moves occurred on alt coins, some went down 80%. Mr. President's own World Liberty Financial for example went down from 18c to even 6c in an instant.
- exabrial 1y ago
  That too seems like business as usual though?
  - tim333 1y ago
    Not really. It was the biggest such crash ever.
wmf 1y ago
There was a flash crash down to ~$104K that wiped out leveraged traders. Liquidation cascades are relatively uncommon and the last one was in 2021 IIRC.
scotty79 1y ago
Yeah, the commotion is a bit silly. "The crash" basically brought the price of BTC to the level it was comfortably at two weeks ago. I think disproportional media interest in last two weeks of appreciation and "the crash" is a failed attempt to finally kickstart this BTC bull or bear market. Somebody is getting impatient with last two years of steady growth.
factorialboy 1y ago
For long-term holders, this hardly matters. The real story here is insider trading and corruption by people close to President Trump, who knew, down to the exact minute, when to short BTC and ETH. BTC, meanwhile, being a scarce asset, will recover as fiat supply increases with time.
- thehappypm 1y ago
  Is insider trading even illegal with bitcoin?
  - wmf 1y ago
    Insider trading of Bitcoin is illegal under CFTC regulations. It won't be enforced because crime is legal though.
  - factorialboy 1y ago
    This President, too, will pardon his son and the rest of their family. So, it doesn't really matter if it's a crime or not.
- crowbahr 1y ago
  Yeah insider traders opening new accounts just over 1 day before, putting tens of millions into those accounts as shorts and stopping right before the president's announcement (to the second in some cases) meaning they walked away with hundreds of millions... It's obvious, it's out in the open, and nobody will prosecute it.
smcleod 1y ago
It's not really bitcoin but the huge alt coin market much of which dropped 60%+ in just two hours.
kkfx 1y ago
Nowadays many like 100-1000× leverage, with no real stoploss strategy and with significant portion of their capitals. The pump of ZCash also prove some like to clean their history (nowadays that Monero was attacked to crash Houthis international trades). It's business as usual for those who know the business, many are newcomers.

dboreham 1y ago

Why does "orange guy doing random thing" cause Bitcoin to go down in value? I mean, whatever the random thing was, it seems to have nothing whatever to do with Bitcoin.

stavros 1y ago
I guess because it's random things that cause anything to go up or down nowadays, so it fits.
candiddevmike 1y ago
Because Bitcoin is far, far more correlated with the stock market than the proponents want to admit. Notice that gold didn't budge, "digital gold" my ass. When folks get scared, pure speculation instruments like BTC will tank.
- liquidise 1y ago
  Gold fell on Friday and recovered over the weekend. BTC certainly remains a more speculative asset than physical gold, but the comparison is not as unhinged as you make it sound.
  - nutjob2 1y ago
    Gold is the, uh, gold standard of safety bets and has run up lately to due comprehensive craziness around the world and especially in the US. How is BTC not the exact opposite of gold? It has no fundamentals whatsoever, no uses outside its transactability, and is widely used to speculate.
    - liquidise 1y ago
      > How is BTC not the exact opposite of gold? If BTC is the exact opposite of gold, it follows that Eth, Ripple, USDC, etc are all more gold-like than BTC. I'd be interested to hear why you believe that to be true. BTC is a coin with longer investments and does not fluctuate as much as other cryptocoins (by %). It has a known supply (past, present and future) and predictable mining rate. It has a known finite future supply cap. To be clear i don't believe BTC is a perfect gold analog. But if you have to pick the "most gold-like" digital asset, it would make my short list.

daft_pink 1y ago

Shocker. At least tulip bulbs could be planted.

tantalor 1y ago
Fun fact: they're edible too > In addition to the rationing system, the government provided food through soup kitchens in the cities. As the intensity of the famine increased, the reliance on soup kitchens increased. In April 1945, 1.8 million people in the cities were served daily. One pint of soup per person was the normal ration. The quality of the soup deteriorated over time and some people considered it inedible. The caloric content of a soup ration diminished from 483 calories to 268 calories. The soup served was often made from sugar beets, tulip bulbs, and potato peels. Pet dogs and cats were sometimes eaten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongerwinter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongerwinter
- hvb2 1y ago
  Way of topic but quoting the hongerwinter as a 'fun fact'.... Wow...
drcode 1y ago
Just give us a date/year/etc in which you think the value of bitcoin will go to zero If you are unable to do that, then you implicitly agree, as pretty much everyone does now, that bitcoin has an intrinsic market value that will remain over an indefinite time horizon
- specialist 1y ago
  price != value
- ASalazarMX 1y ago
  > Just give us a date/year/etc in which you think the value of bitcoin will go to zero So you can take advantage of the market? No way, only insiders are allowed to do that. I could change your question: Do you think possible that the value of bitcoin will go to zero? If yes, you implicitly agree that it's fueled by speculation and a Ponzi scheme that needs a constant influx of fresh, if boring, fiat currency.

grues-dinner 1y ago

"Miscommunication" is when you see mineral water on the bill when you thought it was tap water. Being that ignorant of the positions during a trade war that you started and doing it in public on Twitter is more like holding Uno cards face-out during your own game of poker. > Amid the market's downturn on Friday, our view was that the 100% tariff announcement by Trump was a bargaining chip. > After China's statement last night, we believe the odds of Trump's 100% tariff on China going into effect are extremely low. "Does nothing, wins" is getting a bit out of hand: they're going back in time and winning 26 hours before they even start.

scotty79 1y ago

The funniest thing is that BTC is 100k EUR +-5k for some time now and appreciating very slowly and linearly (at the rate about +300% over 2 years). If you see BTC rising faster when you look at its price in dollars you don't see the appreciation of BTC. You see the decline of the dollar.

lawlessone 1y ago
Thought i was the only one noticing that , people celebrating the rise in dollars they get for it. Then i check the euro price and it hasn't budged. And it's not like the euro hasn't been inflating.. Is there anything people can actually use to see what's going on ? Gold? eggs?
- scotty79 1y ago
  Currently, after going through the wave of inflation, that swept the world and originated with overprinted pandemic dollars, euro is pretty much back to its historically more or less stable inflation of ~2% per year on average. It doesn't seem that significant, but sure, gold might also be a good indicator for trying to understand where we are. Although, you can't think of it as a unit of value no more than you can think about bitcoin this way. Gold also appreciates like crazy similarly to bitcoin. Especially now, when people feel like recession is basically ensured so they roll back their investments in more risky assets.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

jmyeet 1y ago

While it's fascinating to watch crypto bros learn exactly why the financial system is like it is, kinda like the kid eating baking chocolate, that's boring. It happens basically every day. What's more interesting is how massive hte insider trader problem is already and it's only going to get worse. At some point it's going to undermine the financial markets themselves because nobody is going to trust it. Libertarians might get mad but financial markets, like all markets, require strong regulation to function. A consequence of the presidential immunity decision is that Trump and his orbiters are allowed to insider trade with absolutely no repercussions. If somebody in his orbit does get in trouble, no problem. Just sell another pardon. The US control and influence over the global financial system is a key pillar of its global power. As much as we might hear platitudes like "America First", this administration has done more to destroy the global power and influence of the US than any in living memory and it's not even close.

unit149 1y ago

[dead]

walterbell 1y ago

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/hackers-used-binance-to-crash-crypto-market/ https://www.cryptopolitan.com/hackers-used-binance-to-crash-... - Hackers likely exploited a Binance collateral loophole in its Unified Account system to trigger mass liquidations on October 11. - Collateral assets USDE, wBETH, and BnSOL crashed sharply, wiping out traders and market makers as liquidation prices relied on Binance’s spot order book. - The attack happened between Binance’s oracle update announcement and its implementation, suggesting precise timing and planning. Binance statement: https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/detail/0989d6c7f32545bfb019e3249eaabc3f https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/detail/0989d...

hitekker 1y ago

How could I be able short bitcoin at this point? Asking genuinely but not too seriously.

HWR_14 1y ago
Google "ETF short bitcoin". There are some you can just buy like any other publicly traded ticker.
stouset 1y ago
Just remember, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
quickthrowman 1y ago
CME has futures and micro futures.
csomar 1y ago
You do not short assets like Bitcoin. They can go to irrational levels fast and force you into a liquidation. There is a healthy options market for crypto, try that instead.

sakopov 1y ago

There is a thread on X which unravels the short trade placed hours before Trump's statement and linked it to an individual from Hong Kong https://x.com/eyeonchains/status/1977071983172231507 https://x.com/eyeonchains/status/1977071983172231507

theturtle 1y ago

[dead]

mrlonglong 1y ago

The day Trump announced the tariffs, someone placed an US $100M bet that crypto would crash thirty minutes before the announcement. They made nearly US $200M profit. Someone in the Trump admin is cashing in, and it's not the first time this has happened.

tim333 1y ago

The article doesn't really explain what happened but a lot of the alt coins were bought with borrowed money. When Trump announced the latest 100% tariffs on China the selling caused a lot of alt coins to fall such that traders were stopped out and their coins sold which caused more drops some as much as 99% in a few minutes. Then things bounced back.

Kate5477 1y ago

[dead]

Lumoscore 1y ago

[flagged]

sph 1y ago
Excellent use of LLMs to write believable spam and make the Internet shittier for everybody. But posting it under the name of the company you’re trying to push defeats the purpose. Come on, it’s spammers 101.

gilberthelen 1y ago

[dead]