On October 11, 2025, the cryptocurrency market witnessed one of the most dramatic deleveraging events in history. The flash crash, triggered by geopolitical news and amplified by systemic vulnerabilities in major trading platforms, led to a record $19.35 billion liquidation, affecting more than 1.6 million traders.
When platforms like Hyperliquid saw a staggering $10.31 billion in liquidations, and Binance was preparing for what might be the largest compensation package in history, BitMEX was able to weather the storm with extraordinary stability. Our systems worked exactly as designed, handling the highest single-day trading volumes since December 2021, while successfully protecting our users and platform strength.
This review report will explain to you exactly what happened on October 11, and will detail the specific risk management and operating systems that ensured BitMEX remained strong amid the chaos.
Market-wide ripple effects: It’s the system that fails, not just the price collapse
The initial catalyst for this decline came from abroad – a post from Donald Trump threatening heavy tariffs sent shockwaves through traditional and even cryptocurrency markets. However, the main driver of the market crash stems from a major systemic failure at Binance, which led to a domino effect throughout the market:
- Defective price oracles and uninstalled spirals: On platforms like Binance, the decline was greatly magnified because their systems relied on internal spot market prices as oracle data. This design fails to account for the severe drain on liquidity, creating a death spiral where assets like wbETH are valued at a fraction of their true value. This in turn leads to unfair calculations based on incorrect data.
- Extensive Liquidation and Settlement of Accounts: The amount of losses incurred by other platforms was enormous. According to data from Lookonchain, on DEX Hyperliquid derivatives, the assets of more than 1,000 wallets were completely emptied, and the total user losses exceeded 1.23 billion US dollars. This indicates that its systems fail to protect users from catastrophic cascading risks.
- Admitting failure: Other platforms, such as perpetual contract DEX Lighter, have publicly acknowledged their problems. Its liquidity pool saw the third worst single-day performance in history, and the team also promised to launch a compensation plan.
BitMEX Durability: A system designed for extreme volatility
In sharp contrast, BitMEX recorded a liquidation of just $38.5 million, just 0.2% of the total market size. This outstanding performance is due to our strong, multi-layered risk management philosophy and superior operational stability.
- Essential commerce infrastructure: superior performance under high loads
The performance of our platform’s core infrastructure under extreme loads demonstrates its exceptional operational resilience.
- No overload on the system: In times of crisis, the carrying capacity of stock exchange trading engines is crucial. While many platforms suffer from API overload and system-level lag, the BitMEX engine maintains completely normal performance. This stability ensures that traders can have uninterrupted access to the platform and manage their positions during periods of extreme volatility.
- Continuity of withdrawal services: Operational safety also extends to treasury management functions. Unlike other exchanges that have completely suspended withdrawals, BitMEX continues to process user funds. Although there were brief delays in some transactions due to network-wide congestion, the persistence of withdrawals is a strong testament to the resilience of our platform’s security and funding systems under extreme pressure.
- Automatic Liquidation (ADL): The ultimate protection mechanism
The first directive of our risk engine is to prevent systemic failure. To ensure that a single large illiquid position does not exhaust the insurance fund, the system uses an automatic deleveraging (ADL) mechanism. This is a last resort that protects users and exchanges by using profitable counterparty positions to fill bankruptcy orders. On the day the market fell, only 15 contracts were automatically reduced. This was a deliberate and careful intervention that successfully protected the insurance fund, allowing it to withstand manageable losses of approximately US$2 million while ensuring the solvency of the platform.
- Fair price determination: Protection against local uninstallation
The cornerstone of our platform’s defense system is the composite index for determining fair prices. BitMEX does not use its last trading price for filtering. Instead, the tick price is based on a weighted average of 16 major highly liquid exchanges. This approach prevents local liquidity crises or sudden collapses in single-component exchanges from causing unfair liquidations.
- Human Intervention: Virtual Security
The BitMEX system is designed keeping in mind in the event of a hack or breach that may require human oversight to respond to unprecedented market volatility. During the bear period, some tick and indicator prices were temporarily “stuck” – an intentional safety feature that limited the maximum price movement to catch data errors or unusual price pins. Our team was on site throughout the event to verify these price movements. The “human-machine retrieval” system prevents automated chaos caused by faulty forecasts on other exchanges.
BitMEX: Designed for stability
The flash crash that occurred on October 11 exposed deep architectural flaws in many exchange trading systems that clearly prioritized other factors at the expense of stability and user protection. As an OG-rated derivatives exchange that has seen every cryptocurrency up and down cycle since 2014, we have always built our platform in anticipation of such black swan events. Our extremely low liquidation volume, successful protection of user funds, maintaining 100% uptime during events, and continuous processing of withdrawals are testimony to this philosophy. In a time of market panic, the stability of the stock market’s fundamental architecture is what is most important.
Are you looking for a proven and reliable trading platform? Come to BitMEX – we currently offer up to 5000 US dollarsBonus trading experience.
