Bitcoin’s Wild Ride: $20B Liquidations, Trump’s Tweet, and the Crypto Panic!

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Key points:

  • Oh, what a mess! A sharp drop in open interest reveals the scale of the $20 billion in leveraged liquidations, leaving traders reluctant to dip their toes back into the market.

  • Bitcoin’s price woes? They’ll probably stick around until the CME BTC and equities futures markets open on Sunday night (US hours), so buckle up.

The crypto market is still reeling from Friday’s catastrophic sell-off, which made history by wiping out over $20 billion in liquidations across centralized exchanges, with hundreds of millions more evaporating in the DeFi space. How’d this all happen? Well, folks, President Trump’s spicy tweet about a 100% tariff on Chinese imports sent shockwaves through the crypto world. Not your usual Friday night tweet storm, huh?

According to CoinGlass data, this flash-crash was no joke. As of now, Bitcoin (BTC) is struggling to stay above $110,000, while other heavy hitters like Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) have taken a dive of 3.74% and 7.0% respectively. Guess everyone’s too busy looking at Trump’s Twitter to check their portfolios. 🙄

Now, Trump’s tweet was perfectly timed – right at the tail end of the trading day for equities and regulated crypto venues. So don’t be surprised if we see more price dips over the weekend as volume thins and the order books in CeFi and CEXs go on vacation. Who needs a holiday, right? 📉

Ray Salmond, head of markets at CryptoMoon, had a nice chat with Schwab Network anchor Nicole Petallides, where he explained that Bitcoin, Ether, and other altcoins were like a buffet for traders with liquidation heatmaps showing exactly where to strike.

“Take a look at the liquidation heatmap from Hyblock Capital. It shows where the long and short positions are across various exchanges. You’ll see a juicy pocket of long positions between $120,000 to $113,000, ripe for exploitation.”

And just in case you were wondering, Salmond kept going with the fun facts:

“Plenty of metrics suggest Bitcoin is trading at a discount right now. Take $120,000 as the mean price. A move of 1 standard deviation gets you to $115,000, and 2 standard deviations brings you to $110,000. There’s a hearty amount of bids hanging out in that range.”

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s still grappling with staying above the $110,000 mark. The liquidation heatmap is showing a sweet spot for leveraged long positions at $98,600. And traders? Well, they’re acting like they’ve seen a ghost, hesitating to open new positions – at least in the perpetual future market. 👀

Let’s not forget the bigger picture: global open interest for all cryptocurrencies (excluding BTC and ETH) took a hit too. Most exchanges saw a near 45% drop. Maybe it’s time to call a financial therapist. 💸

With Bitcoin and the rest of the market showing some weakness over the weekend, the most likely scenario is more soft selling until the CME futures markets open on Sunday evening. Why? Well, the futures market will give us a glimpse into how traditional finance (TradFi) feels about all this crypto drama. Will global open interest rise? Stay stagnant? Or just keep nosediving? Time will tell.

And for those of you keeping track, X user, EndGame Macro, gave a solid rundown of what was happening behind the scenes before the crypto market chaos hit. Grab your popcorn 🍿 and read up.

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2025-10-12 00:55