The cryptocurrency market faced a dramatic downturn over the weekend, resulting in the liquidation of more than $19 billion in leveraged positions across various digital currencies.
Friday’s downturn marked one of the most significant liquidations by sheer volume, surpassing the dollar value losses seen during the FTX collapse in 2022 by over tenfold.
As traders scrambled to adjust their strategies, Bitcoin’s spot trading volume surged. While it might seem logical to assume that Friday would mark Bitcoin’s highest trading day due to this upheaval, an intriguing insight has come to light.
Scott Melkel, host of “The Wolf of All Streets” podcast, highlighted an interesting observation about Bitcoin’s price drop using data from Coinbase in a recent tweet.
Melkel noted that despite Friday’s crash being substantial, it wasn’t actually Coinbase’s highest-volume day for Bitcoin this summer. In July alone, there were two days with higher volumes where prices barely budged; minor declines were swiftly countered by buying activity.
Fascinating detail.
The crash on Friday wasn’t even Coinbase’s busiest day for Bitcoin this summer. Two days in July saw greater volumes – yet prices hardly shifted. Small drops were quickly snapped up.
This reveals much about last week’s events. It wasn’t a… pic.twitter.com/7wtSOQMdU9
— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) October 13, 2025
This insight suggests that according to Melkel, what transpired was not widespread panic selling but rather a leverage-induced event. He described it as a “chain reaction of forced liquidations” rather than spot market hysteria.
Melkel further speculated that during the peak of this decline, trading on spot exchanges might have been partially halted, preventing genuine buyers from intervening even if they wished to do so.
On-chain analysis uncovers extensive deleveraging
The analytics platform Glassnode reported that Friday’s market turmoil led to the largest futures liquidation ever recorded for Bitcoin. Over $11 billion worth of open interest vanished as leverage positions unwound under pressure. Glassnode termed this sell-off as an “historic deleveraging event,” effectively resetting speculative behavior throughout the crypto space.
Correspondingly funding rates within crypto markets plummeted reaching lows unseen since deep into 2022 bear conditions marking one among harshest leverage corrections documented flushing excessive risk-taking out from system entirely according Glassnode insights reveal .
<P As press time approached however bit coin managed recover slightly gaining approximately 1 point eight percent past twenty four hours now valued at hundred fourteen thousand one hundred dollars continuing rebound initiated post Fridays low hundred seven thousand dollars .