The Oct. 10, 2025, crypto market crash worn out an unprecedented $19 billion price of leveraged Bitcoin and different crypto positions. However it was removed from one of many greatest share drops within the worth of BTC on document.
From Mt. Gox’s penny commerce to the FTX collapse shock, right here’s each time Bitcoin’s worth crashed arduous—and the circumstances that triggered it.
That is the large one. Bitcoin dropped roughly 99.9% on Mt. Gox after a hacker stole a whole bunch of hundreds price of BTC and bought it for only a penny. On the time, Mt. Gox facilitated roughly 90% of all Bitcoin buying and selling. As a result of Mt. Gox dominated Bitcoin buying and selling on the time, the change’s inside collapse briefly erased practically your entire market’s worth.
(Mt. Gox was essentially the most dominant, however not the primary, Bitcoin change, in accordance with Guiness World Information. That title belongs to BitcoinMarket.)
The Mt. Gox hack truly occurred on June 15, 2011, however wasn’t disclosed till a number of days later. A Mt. Gox auditor account was compromised and used to steal 740,000 BTC from clients and 100,000 from the corporate itself. When the exploiter dumped the BTC, the worth plummeted to simply pennies.
On the time, that quantity of Bitcoin would have been price about $460,000. At present costs, 840,000 Bitcoin can be price simply shy of $94 billion. That’s equal to your entire BTC treasuries of Michael Saylor’s Technique, Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings, Jack Maller’s XXI, Japan BTC juggernaut Metaplanet, Adam Again’s Bitcoin Commonplace Treasury Co., and newly public Bullish.
Bitcoin dove from $265 to $150, dropping about 43%, in April 2013 due to what Mt. Gox would later name distributed denial of service, or DDoS, assaults. A DDoS assault overwhelms a goal URL with exterior requests to cease it from being accessed by professional customers.
The assault meant that buying and selling on Mt. Gox saved freezing amid document site visitors and prompted a pointy sell-off.
Mt. Gox stated on the time the assaults had grow to be frustratingly frequent. “Attackers wait till the worth of Bitcoins reaches a sure worth, promote, destabilize the change, wait for everyone to panic-sell their Bitcoins, watch for the worth to drop to a certain quantity, then cease the assault and begin shopping for as a lot as they will. Repeat this two or 3 times like we noticed over the previous few days and so they revenue,” the change wrote on the time, in accordance with TechCrunch citing a now-deleted Fb put up.
In December 2013, the Folks’s Financial institution of China made it clear they didn’t need banks touching Bitcoin as a result of it was not backed by any nation or central authority.
Bitcoin had been experiencing a speedy rise. In late November, Bitcoin had climbed above $1,000 for the primary time. On Dec. 5, Bitcoin had risen above $1,200. However two days later, it slipped about 50% to beneath $600 as traders digested the impression of China’s banking ban.
That is across the time that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan had began publicly deriding Bitcoin as “a bubble.”
“It’s a must to actually stretch your creativeness to deduce what the intrinsic worth of Bitcoin is,” he stated throughout an interview with Bloomberg. “I haven’t been in a position to do it. Perhaps anyone else can.”
China Classifies Crypto Transactions as Cash Laundering in Replace to AML Regulation
In early September 2017, China outlawed preliminary coin choices (ICOs), calling them an “unlawful” type of fundraising.
At first, markets brushed it off, viewing the transfer as a crackdown on tokens quite than Bitcoin itself. However panic set in per week later when experiences emerged that Beijing would additionally drive home exchanges to shut. As BTCC, Huobi, and OKCoin confirmed their shutdowns on September 14 and 15, Bitcoin plunged about 25% in two days—from roughly $4,400 to $3,300.
The selloff marked the top of China’s dominance in crypto buying and selling and shifted international liquidity to Japan and Korea.
By late 2017, Bitcoin had been on a tear and was nearing the $20,000 mark for the primary time in its historical past.
Then Bitcoin futures hitting regulated exchanges and too-hot sentiment created a drop that noticed BTC fall from about $16,500 on Dec. 22 to about $11,000 the subsequent day. In 24 hours, Bitcoin misplaced roughly one-third of its worth, 33.3%, marking the start of a year-long bear market.
Chicago Board Choices Futures Change (CBOE) and Chicago Mercantile Change (CME) had simply launched cash-settled Bitcoin futures contracts.
Bitcoin’s $19 Billion Leverage Wipeout Leaves Market in Reset Mode
It’s not that there weren’t already crypto native Bitcoin derivatives exchanges—Deribit, BitMEX, and Kraken have been all energetic on the time. However the crypto native corporations have been offshore or unregulated then. The Wall Road fits most popular to make use of venues that already had licenses from the Commodities Futures Buying and selling Fee.
Months later, the Federal Reserve Financial institution of San Francisco printed a report blaming the introduction of futures for the December crash.
“The speedy run-up and subsequent fall within the worth after the introduction of futures doesn’t look like a coincidence,” the financial institution wrote. “Relatively, it’s in keeping with buying and selling conduct that usually accompanies the introduction of futures markets for an asset.”
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic despatched traders right into a panic and Bitcoin into one in every of its greatest crashes.
The BTC crash occurred the day after the World Well being Group formally declared a world pandemic. The next day, BTC began just under $8,000 after which plummeted to about $4,850, dropping virtually half its worth.
Greater than $1 billion in leveraged lengthy positions have been liquidated that day, forcing cascading gross sales throughout BitMEX, Binance, and different exchanges.
The crash was extreme sufficient to have earned the “Black Thursday” moniker. However the excellent news is that the wipe out preceded a bullish 12 months, throughout which BTC smashed each conceivable document.
In mid-Could, BTC traders have been rattled when Tesla all of the sudden yanked the plug on its plans to just accept Bitcoin as cost for its digital autos. The market recovered, however merchants solely obtained a brief reprieve.
Every week later, the Folks’s Financial institution of China China cracked down on Bitcoin miners, sending costs into freefall and the BTC hashrate (the quantity of mining energy that helps safe the community) plummeting.
Inside hours of Beijing reiterating its ban on crypto transactions, panic promoting and cascading liquidations wiped roughly $8 billion from leveraged positions.
This one was unhealthy sufficient to have earned the Black Wednesday nickname. Within the span of about 12 hours, Bitcoin fell roughly 30% from about $43,000 to $30,000. The losses didn’t cease there. By June 22, 2021, Bitcoin had dipped beneath $30,000 for the primary time in six months.
Bitcoin Falls Under $30,000 For First Time Since January
Crypto lender Celsius froze withdrawals and swaps on June 12, citing “excessive market situations.” The transfer got here simply two months after TerraUSD’s collapse and sparked fears of a broader liquidity disaster.
It had solely been two months for the reason that colossal collapse of TerraUSD, Terraform Labs’ algorithmic stablecoin. The token was designed to remain pegged 1:1 to the U.S. greenback, however bottomed out at 13 cents because it got here aside on the seams.
So when Celsius froze withdrawals, saying it was accomplished to “stabilize liquidity,” traders panicked. In its heyday, Celsius supplied clients excessive yield for crypto deposits. However when clients have been all of the sudden lower off from their funds on the platform, Bitcoin bore the brunt.
The day the announcement went out, Bitcoin began round $26,000 after which fell 15% to beneath $22,000.
When experiences surfaced that Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX change confronted a liquidity shortfall, panic swept the market.
On Nov. 8, Bitcoin fell greater than 17% in 24 hours, from about $20,500 to $16,900, and briefly touched $15,600 as FTX halted withdrawals.
Inside days, FTX filed for chapter—a collapse that will ripple by your entire crypto business, and whose impact can be felt for the subsequent two years.
