Fear and Greed Index Nosedives as 1.66 Million Traders Liquidated
Crypto sentiment flipped overnight after President Donald Trump vowed to impose 100 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports. Within 24 hours the widely followed Fear and Greed Index collapsed from a “Greed” reading of 64 to a “Fear” reading of 27, a swing seldom seen in a single session. The statement detonated highly levered derivatives books, prompting what CoinGlass called “the largest liquidation event in crypto history.”
Real-time tallies show at least 1.66 million traders forced out of positions for on-chain losses exceeding $19.33 billion. Market-structure analysts caution that the true figure may top $30 billion because leading venues such as Binance publish only one liquidation per second, masking the full scale of forced unwindings during the most volatile intervals.
Three-Hour Cascade Shreds Market Cap and Long Exposure
Bitcoin plummeted from just over $122 000 to an intraday low below $102 000, erasing every gain booked since August. Ethereum mirrored the sell-off, sliding from $4 783 to $3 400 before staging a partial rebound. In the same three-hour window the global crypto market capitalization shrank by roughly $1 trillion, finishing the session 9 percent lower at $3.8 trillion.
Derivatives desks confirmed that more than $7 billion in positions were liquidated in a single hour, with long exposure accounting for the overwhelming $16.83 billion of the $19.33 billion tally. Bitcoin led the purge at $5.38 billion, followed by Ethereum at $4.43 billion, Solana at $2.01 billion, and XRP at $708 million.
Permissionless perpetual-futures exchange Hyperliquid processed the single largest wipe-out—an ETH-USDT trade worth $203.36 million—and shouldered 53 percent of all liquidations. Centralized competitors Bybit, Binance, and OKX absorbed $4.65 billion, $2.39 billion, and $1.21 billion respectively.
Why This Meltdown Dwarfed COVID-19 and FTX
The March 2020 pandemic crash liquidated $1.2 billion, while the November 2022 FTX implosion claimed $1.6 billion. Friday’s tariff-triggered rout, therefore, was about twenty times more violent than COVID-19’s capitulation and an order of magnitude larger than the FTX dislocation. Multicoin Capital partner Brian Strugats warns that attention now turns to hidden counterparty risk: “The question is whether off-exchange obligations can settle without sparking a broader credit crisis.”
Can October’s “Uptober” Reputation Survive?
October has historically been Bitcoin’s second-strongest month, averaging 20 percent gains since 2013. Drops of more than five percent are rare, recorded only in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. Economist Timothy Peterson notes that each of those setbacks—except 2021—was followed by a brisk rebound of four to twenty-one percent within a week. A similar reaction from Friday’s $102 000 low would target roughly $124 000.
This time, however, policy risk lingers. The White House set a 1 November effective date for the new tariffs but hinted at a possible reversal should Beijing loosen restrictions on rare-earth exports. Options positioning on Deribit underscores the stakes: put-open-interest peaks at strikes of $110 000 and $100 000, levels viewed by Orbit Markets as “make-or-break” support for the current three-year bull cycle.
Analyst Outlook and Key Technical Levels
Opinion is sharply divided. Jan3 founder Samson Mow argues that “twenty-one days of ‘Uptober’ remain,” while MN Trading Capital’s Michael van de Poppe calls the purge “the bottom of the current cycle.” Others, such as Kronos Research CIO Vincent Liu, attribute the slide to “institutional over-leverage intertwined with macro uncertainty.”
Bitcoin trades near $111 500 after a knee-jerk bounce. Bulls must defend $110 000–$113 000 and reclaim $113 500 to open a path toward $118 000, $124 500, and the recent $126 000 high. A failure would expose the psychological $100 000 level and even the $95 000 zone flagged by options-market stress tests.
Ethereum changes hands around $3 833, hemmed in by support at $3 600–$3 800 and resistance at the pivotal $4 000 mark. RSI metrics suggest oversold conditions, yet prior bear markets illustrate that such readings can persist when macro headwinds dominate.
With roughly $20 billion in excess leverage already flushed, near-term selling pressure may ease. Nonetheless, traders remain hostage to the tariff timeline and any secondary waves of forced deleveraging that could arise if key support zones give way.
