The October 11 Liquidation Event: What Happened When $20-30B Vanished From Crypto Markets

October 11, 2025 marked one of those days traders talk about for years. A perfect storm of liquidity evaporation triggered the crypto market's biggest single-day liquidation cascade—somewhere between $20 and $30 billion in positions got wiped out.

Here's the breakdown: it wasn't just one domino falling. Sudden liquidity drains across major trading pairs created a chain reaction. ADL (Auto Deleveraging) systems kicked in, forcing position closures. Market makers who thought they had hedges suddenly found themselves exposed. The math didn't work anymore. Spreads blew out. Prices whipsawed. And those caught on the wrong side? Liquidated.

The scale matters. This wasn't some small exchange having issues. This was systemic stress playing out across the whole market infrastructure. Retail traders got obliterated, sure—but the real story was institutional players and sophisticated liquidity providers realizing their models underestimated tail risk.

What made October 11 different was the speed. Normally, markets have time to adjust. Volatility spikes, people re-hedge, things stabilize. This time? The unwinding happened fast enough that cascading liquidations fed on themselves, creating that $20-30B crater.