Cryptocurrency liquidations reached unprecedented levels in 2025, with total nominal values surpassing $150 billion across all exchanges. Bitcoin and other digital assets experienced daily average liquidations between $400 million and $500 million.
What Happened: Record Liquidations
According to a new annual derivatives market analysis from CoinGlass, the derivatives market experienced its largest single-day liquidation event in history on Oct. 10, when combined short and long position closures hit $19 billion during a sharp Bitcoin price correction.
The cryptocurrency had crashed days after reaching a new all-time high above $126,000.
CoinGlass data suggests the actual scale of the October liquidation event likely approached $30 billion to $40 billion when accounting for platform disclosure timing and market maker feedback. Long positions comprised approximately 85% to 90% of the liquidated derivatives bets during the event.
Most daily liquidations remained within tens to hundreds of millions of dollars throughout 2025, primarily reflecting routine margin adjustments and short-term position clearing in high-leverage trading environments.
The year recorded $85.70 trillion in total cryptocurrency derivatives trading volume across centralized exchanges.
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Why It Matters: Market Structure
The October deleveraging event represented several multiples of the second-highest liquidation squeeze from the previous market cycle, according to CoinGlass analysis.
Trading volume surged to $748.3 billion on Oct. 10, nearly triple the annual average of $264.5 billion.
The report indicated that derivatives trading became the core battlefield for price discovery and leveraged speculation during market acceleration phases. Bitcoin currently trades around $88,180, up more than 2% over the past week.
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