It was a weekend to test nerves and margin calls. The crypto market imploded after President Trump dropped his October 10 Truth Social bombshell. A 100% tariff on all Chinese imports, effective November 1 (or sooner, depending on how fiery the next post gets) plus export controls on key software. The move came in retaliation to Beijing’s rare earth export curbs, materials that keep semiconductors, batteries, and yes, the digital economy humming.
Within hours, the dominoes fell. More than USD19 billion in leveraged positions vanished across 1.6 million accounts. Bitcoin plunged from USD125,000 to a gut-check USD102,000 before finding a shaky foothold around USD111,600 (down 10.8%).
Ethereum slid 12.1% to USD3,780 while Solana took the express elevator down 20% to USD178.72. Roughly USD560 billion in market value evaporated, trading volumes exploded 145% and spreads widened like a canyon.
Then came the flash crashes. On both centralized and decentralized exchanges, altcoins went off a cliff, some by 99%. Stop-losses did not stop much. They merely watched. Liquidity evaporated as algorithms panicked and order books went hollow.
On Binance, users found themselves staring at frozen screens, “pending” orders, and bizarre last prices that looked more like typos. Bybit and Coinbase echoed similar woes while Hyperliquid saw spreads so wide they could have hosted a truck convoy.
The true chaos unfolded that afternoon as markets hit what can only be described as a liquidity black hole. Tokens like Sui and ATOM nosedived 90–99% in mere seconds, only to rebound sharply once trading resumed but not before wiping out accounts that learned the hard way about leverage limits.
Phew! Through all this, our portfolios held steady. We stayed fully invested but never overexposed with leverage and that made all the difference. While others were watching their leveraged dreams evaporate, we were quietly watching the storm pass. In markets like these, resilience is not luck, it is design.