On October 10, 2025, bitcoin hit a record above $126,000 and then fell to about $105,000, mostly within minutes. More than $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in a single day. A year later, CoinDesk looked at what has changed, and the answer is: a lot in the plumbing, much less in behaviour.

📌 The news

CoinDesk Research compared market depth on major exchanges across four dates. Bitcoin's depth within 1% of price is now about $11.7M, roughly 75% above crash day. Ether's depth within 1% rose about three-quarters to around $5.3M. Altcoins went the other way: depth within 5% of price fell about a third since early 2025.

🔍 Why it matters

Deeper books mean large orders move prices less, which makes cascades harder to start in the majors. But Mark Connors of Risk Dimensions told CoinDesk the leveraged products "have not gone away," and another crash remains possible.

📊 The numbers

• Liquidations on crash day: more than $19B

• Weekly spot volume, four weeks to September 27: about $279B, versus $801B in the crash week

• August weekly low: about $135B

• BTC depth fell about 12% between October 7 and 8 during a selloff, an early stress test

⚖️ Bull vs bear case

Bull case: traders now watch order books, open interest and funding rates more closely, and institutional market makers have added real capital to the majors.

Bear case: perpetual futures still dominate trading, exchanges still profit from leverage, and thin altcoin books, including mid-caps around $SOL's ecosystem, can still gap hard.

👀 What to watch next

• Open interest relative to market cap

• Funding rates during sharp rallies

• Whether altcoin depth stops shrinking

━━━━━━━━━━━━

💡 My take: The market is sturdier at the top and more fragile underneath. If you trade small caps, the lesson from last October still applies in full. This is my view, not advice.

💬 Do you think a crash of that size could happen again within the next year?

#Crypto #Liquidity #Leverage