Coinglass liquidation data breaks records: Crypto market liquidations to exceed $150 billion in 2025

In 2025, the total clearing amount in the cryptocurrency derivatives market reached up to $150 billion, with an average daily clearing amount between $400 million and $500 million.

This staggering figure resulted from the flash crash after Bitcoin hit a record high of $126,000 on October 10th. On that day, the peak of liquidations exceeded $19 billion, with 85% to 90% of the liquidated positions being long positions.

01 Annual Liquidation Storm

The intense volatility in the cryptocurrency market in 2025 left a profound mark in CoinGlass’s data. The total nominal value of forced liquidations throughout the year reached approximately $150 billion.

This means that, on average, every trading day, the system forcibly cleared leverage positions worth 400 million to 500 million USD.

The vast majority of trading days saw liquidation scales maintained in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, mainly reflecting daily margin adjustments and short-term position liquidations by investors in a high-leverage environment. These daily liquidations generally did not cause substantial impacts on market price structures.

True systemic stress was concentrated during a few brief but intense crisis moments. The most notable event was the leveraged deleveraging incident that occurred between October 10th and 11th.

02 October 10th: A Historic Liquidation Day

October 10, 2025, is a day worth remembering in the history of crypto derivatives trading. After Bitcoin had just recently broken through $126,000 to set a new high, the market suddenly turned downward.

The sharp price fluctuations triggered a chain reaction, with total forced liquidations exceeding $19 billion on that day, setting the largest single-day liquidation record in the industry’s history.

However, according to CoinGlass’s report, considering the data disclosure timing of some platforms and feedback from market makers, the actual liquidation scale might approach $30 billion to $40 billion, which is several times the second-highest event in the previous cycle.

The trigger for this event was a macroeconomic shock: U.S. President Trump announced a 100% tariff on goods imported from China, sparking risk-off sentiment in the market.

03 Market Structure and Institutional Evolution

In 2025, the crypto derivatives market, while expanding in scale, also underwent profound structural changes. The total trading volume for the year reached approximately $85.70 trillion, with an average daily trading volume of about $264.5 billion.

Against a backdrop of tightening macro liquidity and a phased recovery of risk appetite, overall trading activity throughout the year showed a “low first, then high, oscillating upward” pattern. The market structure became highly concentrated, with major exchanges like Gate dominating the majority of market share.

The market is shifting from an early stage dominated by high-leverage retail speculation to a more diversified institutional trading demand. Traditional financial capital is entering the market through channels such as BTC spot ETFs, options, and compliant futures, with larger scale and clearer regulatory pathways.

Correspondingly, decentralized derivatives also reached a turning point in 2025, moving from concept validation to actual market share competition. High-performance application chain architectures like Hyperliquid, in terms of throughput, latency, and capital efficiency, are now capable of competing directly with centralized trading platforms in specific scenarios.

04 Risk Management Insights and Future Outlook

The extreme events of 2025 served as an unprecedented stress test for existing margin mechanisms, liquidation rules, and cross-platform risk transmission pathways.

These events exposed vulnerabilities at the market architecture level. The system’s reliance on massive leverage, assets with low liquidity, and complex institutional hedging strategies made it highly dependent on the flawless operation of liquidation mechanisms and automatic position reduction.

Under extreme market pressure, these mechanisms failed, leading to chain reactions of hedging failures and liquidations. Some long-tail assets experienced declines of over 80%, with illiquid assets being affected most severely.

Unlike the Terra crisis in 2022, this event did not trigger widespread defaults among institutions. Although market makers like Wintermute suffered some losses due to automatic position reduction mechanisms, their overall capital remained sufficient. Risks were contained within specific strategies and asset ranges.

This crisis also highlighted infrastructure shortcomings: some centralized exchanges faced withdrawal delays, API outages, and even temporary order matching disruptions. It is expected that improvements in liquidation mechanisms and systemic risk prevention will become key topics in the 2026 market.

05 Securing Trading on Gate

After experiencing over $150 billion in intense market cleansing in 2025, choosing a stable, transparent trading platform with robust risk controls has never been more important.

Despite the market’s volatility, mainstream platforms like Gate maintained stable operations, handling up to $5.91 trillion in derivatives trading volume in 2025, ranking among the top globally.

In the face of market turbulence, Gate provides real-time market data and clear market analysis. As of the latest data on December 26th, BTC is temporarily at $88,317, up 0.9% in 24 hours; ETH is at $2,953, up 0.32% in 24 hours. The platform’s key support and resistance level analysis is an essential reference for managing positions and developing trading strategies.

While leverage and derivatives trading offer high potential returns, they also carry increased liquidation risks. The lessons of 2025 underscore the importance of understanding platform margin rules, liquidation mechanisms, and auto-reduction processes.

Future Outlook

During market frenzy, hundreds of billions of dollars of long positions can evaporate in a single day like October 10th. Meanwhile, in quieter daily trading, billions of dollars of positions are silently wiped out by the system every day.

The $85.70 trillion annual derivatives trading volume propelled Bitcoin’s price from $40,000 to a peak of $126,000, making it the first to bear the brunt of macro shifts. The industry is transitioning from a wild west era to a new phase of compliance and institutionalization, but the core issues of risk management remain unchanged.