Bitcoin and Ether See More Liquidity After $19 Billion Crash
Market depth in BTC and ETH has recovered after the October 2025 liquidation wave, but altcoins and spot volume are still clearly lagging on centralized exchanges.
Key Takeaways
- After the $19 billion crash, Bitcoin and Ether have more resting liquidity in their order books than on the crash day and at the start of this year.
- Around October 7, Bitcoin had about $11.7 million within 1% of the price; Ether came in at about $5.3 million within 1%.
- Altcoins and spot trading recovered much less strongly, with lower liquidity and weekly spot volume still far below the crash level.
A year after the biggest wave of liquidations in the crypto market, the market structure is showing a mixed picture. Bitcoin and Ether now have more resting liquidity in their order books than on the day of the crash or at the start of this year. For smaller tokens and spot trading, that recovery has been much weaker.
Bitcoin and Ether Recover
On October 10, 2025, Bitcoin dropped in a few hours from more than $122,600 (€109,400) to below $105,000 (€93,700), after President Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. In that thin Friday evening trading, more than $19 billion (€17 billion) in leveraged positions were liquidated. Since then, liquidity in the major coins has clearly come back.
CoinDesk Research compared market depth on major centralized crypto exchanges at four points: January 1, 2025, October 10, 2025, January 1, 2026, and this week. Market depth is the value of buy and sell orders sitting close to the current price. The deeper the order book, the more volume a large trade can absorb without moving the price much.
For Bitcoin, there was about $11.7 million (€10.4 million) within 1% of the price on October 7. That is about 75% more than on the crash day a year earlier. It is also above the roughly $9 million (€8 million) from the start of this year and above the roughly $6.9 million (€6.2 million) from early 2025. Since Bitcoin itself is about one-third cheaper than before the crash, this is not a price effect but more capital that market makers have put back into the order book.
Ether showed an even clearer recovery. Liquidity within 0.5% of the price has more than doubled since the crash to about $4.2 million (€3.7 million). Within 1%, it has climbed to around $5.3 million (€4.7 million), above both January readings.
Altcoins Lag Behind
For altcoins, the picture is the opposite. In CoinDesk Research's basket, dollar liquidity was highest on January 1, 2025, and was lower at every later measurement. Within 5% of the price, depth has fallen by about a third since early 2025 to around $2 million (€1.8 million). Within 1%, the drop is about one-sixth.
Measured in tokens, liquidity looks less weak, but that is mainly because prices have fallen. Measured in capital, the trend is still downward. That fits the broader picture after the October 2025 crash, when market makers partly pulled back and trading in smaller tokens fell harder than in Bitcoin.
Spot trading has also not fully recovered. Weekly spot volume on centralized exchanges averaged around $279 billion (€249 billion) in the four weeks through September 27. That is almost two-thirds lower than the $801 billion (€715 billion) in the crash week. Volume did pick up in August from about $135 billion (€120 billion) per week, but it remains far below last year's level.
What This Means for Investors
For European crypto investors, this shows that the crypto market is not recovering at the same pace everywhere. The major coins are once again attracting most of the liquidity, while smaller tokens are still being traded with less depth. That can matter for how large orders are absorbed by the market, especially at times when trading gets thin again quickly.
The liquidity recovery in the major coins fits the broader aftermath of the October liquidation wave, when leveraged positions were wiped out of the market in one shot.
