$19B Liquidations Spark Binance Altcoin Crash to Zero

* From October 10-12, 2025, $19 billion in liquidations caused multiple altcoins on Binance, including ATOM and IOTX, to temporarily crash to zero. * Mass collateral sell-offs, system overloads, and the withdrawal of market makers during extreme volatility fueled the event. On October 12, 2025, Cointelegraph reported that several altcoins, including Cosmos (ATOM) and IoTeX (IOTX), briefly fell to zero on Binance amid a broader market downturn. Platform-specific failures during a turbulent three-day period caused the flash crash, which spared their valuations on other exchanges. The liquidation of over $19 billion in leveraged positions across the global crypto ecosystem was the primary driver of the collapse, according to an October 12 report from Cointelegraph. On Binance, the automatic liquidation of altcoins used as collateral for margin trades intensified the sell-off. As a result, this flurry of sell orders overwhelmed Binance's trading infrastructure, causing technical snafus like account freezes and transaction delays for some users. Compounding the chaos, several market makers withdrew during the heightened volatility, reducing the availability of buy-side liquidity on Binance. Market makers typically stabilize markets by placing buy orders, but their absence left the platform vulnerable to a sell order deluge. Consequently, prices of affected altcoins briefly dropped to zero on Binance, while maintaining their values on other exchanges. In response, Binance CEO Richard Teng and co-founder Yi He publicly apologized for the incident. They pledged compensation for losses tied exclusively to technical failures, which Binance's follow-up investigation will verify. However, the reimbursement scheme excludes losses stemming from market-driven price changes. According to CoinMarketCap, as of 15:08 UTC on October 12, Cosmos (ATOM) had rebounded to trade at $3.404, with a 7.139% increase in 24-hour volume, while IoTeX (IOTX) was trading at $0.149, reflecting a 2.777% increase in trading activity.