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Bitcoin plunges from $122,000 to $102,000 in minutes before slight recovery
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Over 1.6 million traders liquidated, marking crypto’s worst-ever single-day loss
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Trump’s tariff announcement on China triggers panic sell-offs across exchanges
The cryptocurrency market suffered its darkest day on Saturday as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) experienced a historic flash crash, wiping out billions of dollars in investor funds and triggering widespread panic.
Bitcoin tumbled sharply from $122,000 to $102,000, before stabilising around $112,000, representing a 17 percent decline. Ethereum, the second-largest crypto asset, plunged by more than 20 percent to $3,440, with smaller altcoins witnessing catastrophic drops ranging between 50 and 90 percent.
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According to data from Coinglass, the sell-off resulted in the liquidation of $19.31 billion worth of leveraged positions in a single day — the largest in cryptocurrency history.
The scale of the collapse stunned even veteran traders.
A total of 1,662,647 traders were wiped out within 24 hours, with the largest single liquidation order recorded on Hyperliquid, involving an ETH-USDT pair worth $203.36 million.
READ ALSO: Bitcoin Hits $115K Amid Growing Derivatives Market Activity
This figure surpasses the devastating market events of the LUNA collapse (2022), FTX implosion, and the COVID-19 crash (2020) combined.
The most affected exchanges were Hyperliquid (over $10 billion), Bybit ($4.5 billion), and Binance ($2.5 billion).
The flash crash followed an unexpected post from U.S. President Donald Trump, who announced a 100 percent tariff increase on “critical software” imports from China.
Trump linked the decision to what he described as China’s “extraordinarily aggressive” stance on trade and export controls of rare earth minerals. The President declared:“China has taken an extraordinarily aggressive position… announcing plans to impose large-scale export controls on virtually every product they manufacture.”
The announcement rattled global financial markets and sent shockwaves through crypto trading platforms, where speculative bets on Bitcoin were rapidly liquidated.
Despite the bloodbath, some analysts urged calm.
Samson Mow, founder of Jan3, remained optimistic, writing on X that “Uptober is still 21 days away.”
Similarly, Michael van de Poppe, founder of MN Trading Capital, asserted that “this is the bottom of the current cycle,” likening the dip to the 2020 pandemic crash.
However, others warned that future volatility could be even more extreme. A Bitcoin libertarian investor predicted that:“In a few years, Bitcoin will plummet from $1 million to $0.8 million in a matter of hours, and we’ll all be discussing a new record high in liquidations.”
As of Saturday, the global cryptocurrency market cap fell from $4.27 trillion to between $3.8 trillion and $4 trillion, resulting in a staggering $250–400 billion in value loss.
While Bitcoin showed minor recovery signs, market sentiment remains fragile, with traders bracing for further volatility amid heightened U.S.–China trade tensions.
