Crypto liquidations near $10 billion in historic drawdown following Trump's 100% tariffs on China

Over 1.5 million crypto traders have been liquidated in the past 24 hours amid a market-wide pullback following retaliatory tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on China. Some $9.55 billion worth of open interest has been erased, according to CoinGlass data.

This includes $8 billion worth of long and $1.55 billion worth of short positions. The two most capitalized blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, saw the largest amount of liquidations, with $1.37 billion and $1.26 billion wiped out, respectively.

The HTX crypto exchange saw the largest single liquidation of $87.53 million in BTC/USDT, according to CoinGlass.

It can often be difficult to place liquidation events in context, given that many crypto sources do not retain complete historical data. That said, Bitcoin's last major long liquidation event came on Sept. 24, when about $285 million in BTC longs were liquidated, the biggest daily wipeout since February.

At least one trader said Friday's drawdown could be "the largest liquidation event," at least in dollar terms, in crypto history.

Crypto's total market capitalization is down over 9% on the day to $3.8 trillion. Bitcoin, for instance, plunged from a price above $122,000 on Friday morning to about $113,600, erasing all gains made since August. At its 24-hour low, BTC briefly dropped under $102,000 on Friday evening.

Almost all tokens saw two major steps down following separate remarks from Trump threatening to slap a "massive increase in Tariffs" on Chinese imports in response to a policy change in Beijing. On Thursday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said foreign entities would need to obtain a license to export products that contain more than 0.1% of rare earth sourced from the country.

Trump confirmed the U.S. would impose 100% tariffs on all Chinese imports later in the day, and was said to have called off a meeting with President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping. However, the president later said he is still open to meeting with Xi, and could call off the tariff increase if China reverses course before Nov. 1.

Calling off the tariffs could lead to a reversal in crypto spot prices, though liquidations are final.

Although many traders lost out in Friday's wipeout, at least one closely-watched derivatives trader appears to have profited. One whale on Hyperliquid shorted nine figures worth of Bitcoin and ETH to achieve an estimated profit of about $190 million.

"And this was just publicly on Hyperliquid imagine what he did on CEXs or elsewhere. I’m pretty sure this guy played a huge role in what happened today," crypto trader @mlmabc, who had been tracking the whale's movements, said on X.