⚡️ $19B Liquidated, Then $200M More Wiped Out: Crypto’s Wildest Week Yet
Published: Tue, 10/14/25
Updated: Tue, 10/14/25
Massive liquidations shook the crypto market this week, wiping out over $20B
For the Love of the Game
(Market Commentary)
A one-two punch rocked the crypto markets over the past few days, starting with Friday’s historic
crypto liquidation event that saw $19B (or more) wiped out of the market.
Today we saw a follow-up liquidation that so far is totaling over $200M. While it’s nothing compared to last week’s disaster, it’s clear to traders that the market is on shaky ground.
Maybe the most concerning part of it all is that uncertainty is coming from all angles. We have concerns about the job market, tariffs, fees on rare earth exports out of China, and growing awareness into the risks the market faces when market makers pull their funds.
All of this is happening while crypto is under attack by Senate Democrats who are proposing tighter
control over defi platforms and self custodial wallets.
The short term will be very revealing as the US and China meet to settle trade disputes, but don’t forget the growth we’re on the verge of. BlackRock is moving away from traditional financial aspects in favor of digital, and Citi will be
launching its crypto custody service in 2026.
Signs are everywhere that, directionally, up and to the right is still the play.
Noteworthy Happenings
Everyone Got Liquidated but One Insider Profited $200M
The crypto market hit a new liquidation record last Friday after Trump announced 100% tariffs against China as retaliation for new restrictions on their rare earth exports.
A record $19B was liquidated in a single day across the crypto market, but multiple reports say the total is closer
to $40B.
On the surface, the losses were a reaction to rekindled trade wars, but it’s now appearing that this was a much bigger attack against Binance’s pricing mechanisms for USDe, wBETH, and BNSOL.
Fallout from the record setting day includes big whales losing tens of millions of dollars, multiple crypto traders who may have taken their own lives, along with unnamed trading firms who may have been liquidated as well.
Insider trading may also have come into play as 1 whale opened a massive short against BTC before Donald Trump’s
tariff tweet, resulting in a $200M profit.
The trader has now opened up another $500M short on BTC, and posted details about why he opened these positions to begin with.
Onchain sleuths suggest that the short trader is working with insider info coming from directly inside the
White House, or connected to the CCP, and has even named people involved - Zach Whitkoff (from World Liberty Financial), Chase Herro, and Trump’s oldest sons. (This is all speculation until receipts are provided).
Strategic Vibes
While the strategy token meta in NFTs continues to find product market fit, one NFT collection may have just given us the blueprint.
Last week we saw the launch of GobStr, PainStr, CheckStr, and VibeStr on the TokenWorks platform.
The VibeStr token pegged to the Good Vibes Club NFT collection arrived with major news from the official
GVC team that they would be adopting the token as their project’s official fungible token.
The team also announced that they would buy $300K worth of VibeStr at market, and airdrop tokens to their
NFT holders based on seasonal rewards tied to community badges.
VibeStr is now the #2 strategy token by market cap, reaching an ATH of $14.5M during a weekend when everything else was down
from the record liquidation event.
Art Blocks Final Iconic Curated Mint
Art Blocks Curated is coming to a close with collection #500, coming from the iconic CryptoPunks creator, Larva Labs.
Larva Labs’ Quine collection went on sale last Thursday in a public auction.
The final sale price blew away expectations, settling at 7.5 ETH ($33K) per mint.
Flippers quickly listed for losses, with the collection falling to as low as 4.2 ETH on secondary markets.
Collectors realized $10K+ losses.
This week the collection has rebounded to a 9 ETH ($38K) floor, showing that the art market may have stronger demand than many had realized.
Peep the charts
AI
The AI market is down 7.19% in the past 7 days to a $15.87B market cap. Top token movers include OPEN (+237.8%), FARTCOIN (-27.95%), FET (-20.43%), VIRTUAL (-14.15%), and IOTX (-12.32%).
The Swarm Report welcomed HiveFury to the show last week to discuss agentic Web3 security
tools.
AI is growing at an exponential rate compared to the internet, with nearly 800 million users within 3 years vs
13 years for the internet.
Virtuals Ethereum AI hackathon submission phase is coming to a close, as projects compete for $100K in
prizes.
VPay launched 1.1 which allows cardholders to spend their VIRTUAL and VPAY tokens anywhere Visa is
accepted.
ai16z’s 1 year experiment as a crypto DAO is coming to a close, and the project will now evolve into elizaOS
over the next 90 days.
NFTs
The Doodles announced yet another major partnership, this time with Universal Horrors (from Universal
Pictures). Details are to come, but most expect a new animated short with classic horror characters (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc) in the Doodles aesthetic.
Larva Labs is partnering with Meebits (who they formerly created and owned), to release a new generative art
experience called Camogen.
CyberKongz are launching their new NFT contract this week that brings new evolvable traits to their Baby Kongz
collection.
OpenSea has added more rewards to their rewards pool including a CryptoPunk, Hypurr, Fidenza, 3 BAYC, 3 Pudgy
Penguins, 3 Quine, Chromie Squiggle, Ringer, a Gazers and $750K in ETH.
RTFKT co-founder Benoit Pagotto has passed away unexpectedly at age 41.
ON1 Force announced a new strategy token called ONISTR, which will be used in a GK Labs IP ecosystem.
Reddit’s NFT Avatars are going away and holders must export their assets by Jan 1 or risk losing their
NFT.
NFT sales declined for the 3rd straight week.
Sellers and buyers were both up this week, 14.02% and 11.18% respectively.
Trade profits have now been negative for 9 weeks in a row.
ETH NFT Composite - 607.61 (-6.41%) SOL NFT Composite - 447.20 (-18.44%) POL NFT Composite - 3.22 (-0.92%) CAR NFT
Composite - 192.70 (-2.00%)
Rexy Date - Oct 21 Blockchain - Arbitrum Price - Free
Web3 Word(s) of the Day
Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement learning is a type of machine learning in which an agent learns by interacting with its environment, receiving rewards for desirable outcomes and
penalties for mistakes. Through trial and error, it discovers strategies that maximize long-term rewards. This approach powers systems like autonomous vehicles, robotics, and game-playing AIs. Common reinforcement learning algorithms include Temporal Difference (TD), Q-learning, and Deep Adversarial Networks.
