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In a surprising turn of events, the announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump regarding the imposition of a 100% tariff on Chinese imports led to a severe meltdown in the cryptocurrency market between Friday evening and Saturday morning. Within 24 hours, approximately 19 billion dollars worth of positions were liquidated, sweeping away 1.6 million investors from the market. Shortly after the events unfolded, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek urged regulators to scrutinize exchanges for fairness in their operations. Central to the debate are allegations of prolonged outages on some exchanges during high volatility and significant pricing deviations.
Marszalek Calls Out to Regulators
Through a post on his X account, Marszalek requested that exchanges with the most liquidations be scrutinized. He demanded public answers on issues like the alignment of prices with indices, trade monitoring, and whether internal trading teams operated with a “Great Wall” separation. He also emphasized the importance of investigating the moments when users could not place orders due to platform slowdowns, which lingered for hours. This appeal came in the wake of reports indicating that liquidations reached record levels between 19-20 billion dollars over the weekend.
The primary trigger for the market’s collapse was identified as Trump’s announcement of stiff tariffs on all Chinese imports, accompanied by escalating trade tensions. Experts highlighted that high leverage levels, automatic liquidation mechanisms, and low liquidity during nighttime further intensified the drop.
Dissecting the Crypto Crash
The intensity of the capital outflow caused extreme wicks in several cryptocurrencies, with instantaneous prices nearly dropping to zero. In certain altcoins, hundreds of point losses were recorded within minutes. For instance, the altcoin ATOM experienced deep dives, followed by partial recovery. Although data providers offered varied perspectives on the total size of liquidations, the scenario clearly pointed to a record-breaking wave of liquidations.
Meanwhile, the responses of centralized exchanges under heavy loads have resurfaced in discussions. Recent weeks saw the temporary suspension of futures trading on Binance due to a malfunction in its unified margin product, exacerbating concerns about the vulnerability of order transmission during systemic stress. Marszalek’s inquiries, such as “were orders priced correctly, were there slowdowns,” center around these operational issues.
