Cryptocurrency Derivatives Market Faces Structural Challenges in 2025
According to PANews, CoinGlass data reveals that the cryptocurrency derivatives market in 2025 experienced forced liquidations amounting to $150 billion. While this may appear as a crisis throughout the year, it is actually a structural norm in the marginal price market dominated by derivatives.
Forced liquidation due to insufficient margin resembles a cyclical fee imposed on leverage. Within the context of an annual derivatives trading volume of $85.7 trillion (averaging $264.5 billion daily), liquidation is merely a byproduct of the price discovery mechanism led by perpetual swaps and basis trading.
As derivatives trading volume increased, the open interest rebounded from the deleveraging trough of 2022-2023. On October 7, the nominal open interest in Bitcoin reached $235.9 billion, with Bitcoin prices touching $126,000 during the same period.
However, record open interest, crowded long positions, and high leverage in small altcoins, combined with global risk aversion triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policies, led to a market turning point. Between October 10-11, forced liquidations exceeded $19 billion, with 85%-90% being long positions. Open interest decreased by $70 billion within days, ending the year at $145.1 billion, still higher than at the beginning of the year.
The core issue of this volatility lies in the risk amplification mechanism. Regular liquidation relies on insurance funds to absorb losses, while extreme market conditions trigger the automatic deleveraging (ADL) emergency mechanism, which inversely amplifies risk.
During liquidity shortages, frequent ADL activation forces the reduction of profitable short and market maker positions, causing market-neutral strategies to fail. The long-tail market suffered the most, with Bitcoin and Ethereum plummeting 10%-15%, and most small asset perpetual contracts dropping 50%-80%, creating a vicious cycle of "liquidation - price drop - further liquidation."
The concentration of exchanges exacerbated the spread of risk, with the top four platforms, including BN, accounting for 62% of global derivatives trading volume. In extreme conditions, synchronized risk reduction and similar liquidation logic led to concentrated sell-offs.
Additionally, infrastructure such as cross-chain bridges and fiat channels faced pressure, hindering cross-exchange fund flows and rendering cross-exchange arbitrage strategies ineffective, further widening price disparities.
Despite the $150 billion in liquidations throughout the year, it is not a symbol of chaos but rather a record of risk avoidance in the derivatives market. The 2025 crisis has not yet triggered a chain reaction of defaults but has exposed structural limitations reliant on a few exchanges, high leverage, and certain mechanisms, with the cost being concentrated losses.
In the coming year, more positive mechanisms and rational trading are needed to prevent a recurrence of the October 10-11 events.
