The crypto market plunged again after China's retaliatory sanctions against the US.
Date: 2025-10-14 Author: Gabriel Deangelo Categories: BUSINESS
After partially recouping their losses last week, cryptocurrencies saw another sharp decline on the night of October 14. Bitcoin (BTC) fell from around $116,000 to $112,000, while Ethereum (ETH) fell from $4,300 to below $4,000. The decline began shortly after China announced restrictions on five U.S. divisions of Hanwha Ocean, one of South Korea's leading shipbuilders, according to Bloomberg.
The total crypto market capitalization fell by $150 billion in a day, falling from $3.95 trillion to $3.8 trillion, a 3.5% decline. Most of the top 100 coins according to CoinMarketCap are in the red. According to Coinglass, over $430 million in long positions were liquidated on trading platforms, with the bulk of the losses coming from traders betting on ETH's rise.
The liquidation mechanism involves the forced closure of a leveraged position when an investor's losses reach the amount of their collateral. For example, with a $1,000 trade with 10x leverage, a trader effectively controls $10,000 in assets, borrowing the remaining $9,000 from the exchange. If the price moves against them and there is insufficient collateral, the exchange automatically closes the position to avoid losses.
The largest sell-off began on October 10, when over $19 billion in positions were forcibly closed in a single day, marking an all-time high. This was triggered by US President Donald Trump's announcement of a planned increase in import tariffs on Chinese goods. Trump later clarified that additional duties of 100% on top of current rates would be introduced starting November 1, which added further pressure to the markets.
Following this, cryptocurrencies stabilized briefly, but the trend reversed again on Tuesday. By 12:00 Moscow time, Bitcoin was trading at $111,800, down 2.7% in 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Jeff Yan, founder of the Hyperliquid platform, questioned the accuracy of official liquidation data. According to him, some large exchanges are deliberately understating the actual volume of forced closures, and the true losses of market participants could be tens of times higher than reflected in public statistics.
Experts believe that uncertainty caused by trade measures between the US and China will continue to weigh on the crypto market in the coming days, and high volatility may persist until new macroeconomic data is released.
