Over $150 billion worth of crypto derivatives positions were forcibly closed in 2025, according to CoinGlass‘ new annual derivatives report, which ForkLog surfaced on December 25. The data shows an average of roughly $400 million to $500 million in daily liquidations, capping a year that punished both over-levered bulls and shorts. Bitcoin trades near $88,000 today, up less than 1% in the past 24 hours, while ether sits just below $3,000, but both remain well below the levels that set up October’s historic flush.
CoinGlass tallies a $150B liquidation year
CoinGlass estimates that forced liquidations across centralized derivatives venues reached about $150 billion in notional terms across 2025, out of roughly $85.7 trillion in total derivatives turnover and an average of $264.5 billion in daily volume, according to the annual study and a summary from Cointelegraph. That means liquidation engines recycled a small slice of overall flow but still erased hundreds of millions of dollars in margin every trading day.
The report notes that on most sessions, long and short liquidations sat in the tens of millions to low hundreds of millions of dollars, reflecting routine margin adjustments in a high-leverage environment rather than structural price shocks. The picture shifted during a handful of concentrated stress windows.
October 10-11: the $19B ‘black Saturday’ reset
The sharpest of those shocks hit over the October 10-11 weekend. CoinGlass tracks more than $19 billion in forced liquidations on October 10 alone, almost all long positions, and estimates based on exchange disclosure schedules and market-maker feedback put the real figure closer to $30 billion to $40 billion. ForkLog, citing CoinGlass, notes that up to 90% of positions closed that day came from crowded longs and describes the episode as a ‘black Saturday’ for leverage.
CoinGlass ties the cascade directly to U.S. President Donald Trump’s October 10 announcement of 100% tariffs on Chinese imports from November 1, together with new export controls on critical software. That headline landed after bitcoin had already spiked to an all-time high near $126,000 in 2025 with futures basis stretched and long funding rich, leaving the market in what the report describes as a fragile combination of high valuation and heavy leverage.
During the event, bitcoin and ether dropped roughly 10% to 15% from peak levels, while a large slice of altcoins and thinly traded perpetuals saw drawdowns of 80% or worse, with some contracts briefly trading close to zero before liquidity returned, according to CoinGlass and a detailed breakdown carried by PANews. The report outlines a sequence where standard liquidation logic emptied order books, insurance funds struggled to keep up, and auto-deleveraging kicked in on several major venues. That process clipped profitable short positions for market makers including Wintermute on illiquid altcoin pairs and then rippled across platforms as APIs lagged, withdrawals clogged and several matching engines suffered brief outages.
Leverage risk shifted into the tails
The annual report frames 2025 as a structural test of derivatives plumbing rather than a simple ‘too much leverage’ story. Nominal liquidations of about $150 billion sound large in isolation but represent only around 0.2% of the $85.7 trillion traded across the year, so the real story sits in how that risk concentrates into tail events.
CoinGlass tracks global crypto derivatives open interest sliding to a yearly low near $87 billion after a first-quarter shakeout, then climbing to a record $235.9 billion on October 7, three days before the tariff shock. The early fourth-quarter reset then wiped more than $70 billion of open interest in a single flush, with year-end open interest still at $145.1 billion, about 17% higher than at the start of 2025, according to the CoinGlass figures relayed by Cointelegraph.
Extreme events that erupted during 2025 imposed stress tests of unprecedented scale on existing margin mechanisms, liquidation rules and cross-platform risk transmission pathways.
Cointelegraph quoted that line directly from the CoinGlass study, and the October event section of the report backs it up with detailed descriptions of stressed insurance funds, aggressive auto-deleveraging and cross-venue liquidity gaps.
A year-long liquidation grind before October
The October wipeout did not arrive in a vacuum. CoinGlass’ semiannual outlook, summarized in English by ChainCatcher and in the original on CoinGlass, shows that on February 3 the market already suffered about $2.23 billion in liquidations in 24 hours, with $1.88 billion of that from long positions and more than 729,000 accounts closed, after Trump’s initial tariff threat hit risk assets. On February 25 another batch of negative macro signals pushed bitcoin below $90,000 and triggered roughly $1.57 billion more in long-heavy liquidations, including around $666 million on Bybit alone.
After the market printed an annual low on April 7 and cleared a large chunk of long risk, an April 23 short squeeze produced the year’s largest short-side event. CoinGlass records more than $600 million in forced short liquidations that day, roughly 88% of all liquidations, after bitcoin ripped about 7% to $93,000 in a single session. Throughout the first half, losses skewed toward longs in both size and frequency, consistent with a bull cycle that concentrated risk in overconfident directional bets rather than in systematic hedging.
Why the $150B figure matters for 2026 positioning
For institutional desks, the number that matters is not just how much was liquidated but where it happened. CoinGlass’ breakdown shows long liquidations heavily concentrated on crowded BTC- and ETH-linked structures, while the most violent price gaps hit altcoins and long-tail perpetuals where auto-deleveraging and infrastructure glitches amplified slippage.
At the same time, derivatives trading continues to centralize. CoinGlass calculates that Binance alone cleared about $25.09 trillion in derivatives volume in 2025, roughly 29.3% of global activity, with OKX, Bybit, Bitget and Gate together lifting the share for the top four above 60%. That concentration means the next stress event will once again hinge on a small set of matching engines, liquidation funds and auto-deleveraging designs.
Bitcoin around $88,000 and ether near $2,950 today sit comfortably above the early-year lows, but CoinGlass’ risk metrics and the 2025 liquidation log both point in the same direction. In an options- and basis-driven market where open interest can jump from $87 billion to $236 billion within months, the real volatility still hides in the tails of the leverage cycle.
