U.S. President Trump once again launched trade retaliatory measures, causing global financial markets to plummet. The most noteworthy was the largest single-day long liquidation in the history of the cryptocurrency market. About US$16 billion in leveraged long positions were cleared in one day, with Bitcoin and Ethereum leading the decline.
U.S. markets plummeted after Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, triggering a global sell-off in risk assets. Affected by this, the prices of mainstream digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum fell sharply, and the selling wave on Friday continued into the Asian session. At the same time, the U.S. government shut down and the release of key economic data was delayed, adding to market uncertainty.
Market panic is rising, and traders are worried about the restart of the trade war, which has led to the largest wave of liquidations in multiple digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum since 2025. Bitcoin once fell below $110,000 and fell about 10% in the past 24 hours before briefly rebounding to $113,294 in the Asian market. Ethereum also bottomed out and rebounded to $3,844. The overall CoinDesk 20 index fell by 12.1%, and the total market value of cryptocurrency fell to US$3.87 trillion.
This round of liquidation was dominated by long positions, with a total liquidation of approximately US$19.1 billion, of which long positions amounted to US$16.7 billion. Platform data shows that the stablecoin USDe briefly fell to $0.9996, exposing the pressure of price decoupling caused by violent fluctuations in the derivatives market. The Ethena team stated that despite the violent market fluctuations, USDe minting and redemption continued to operate normally, and at the same time, due to unrealized short profits, the stablecoin over-collateralization rate was exacerbated.
It is worth noting that the amount of this liquidation far exceeds the FTX crash in 2022 (USD 1.6 billion) and the market collapse caused by the new crown epidemic in 2020 (USD 1.2 billion). It is the largest in the history of the crypto market, and is equivalent to nearly 20 times the new crown crash in absolute terms. However, due to the significant increase in the overall crypto market volume, the percentage decline did not exceed previous major events.
Some analysts pointed out that the crypto market will enter a multi-stage bottoming process in the short term, mainly due to limited liquidity on weekends and market makers need time to digest supply. If U.S.-China trade tensions continue to escalate, the market may experience violent fluctuations again.
In addition, the U.S. government shutdown has resulted in a lack of official economic indicators, making it difficult for the market to obtain key economic information in the context of intensified trade war rhetoric, further exacerbating the risk of volatility.