One year after the 10/10 crash: calmer bitcoin, more sharp days

A year has passed since October 10, 2025, when bitcoin lost about $17,000 within minutes and dragged $19 billion in liquidations along with it. According to CoinDesk's tally, the market survived, but the causes of that crash are still in place.

BTC now trades near $82,800, roughly a third below the record above $126,000 set days before the crash. Annual volatility (46%) is well under the 84% of 2018. Sharp one-day moves, however, show up more often than in the 2018 bear market.

What the October 10, 2025 crash looked like

Before the crash, bitcoin had set an all-time high above $126,000. On October 10 the price slid from around $122,000 to $105,000, and most of the drop fit into a few minutes. Positions worth roughly $19 billion were closed by force.

Open interest sat near historic highs, and traders were piled into bets on a rally along the familiar four-year cycle. Mark Connors of Risk Dimensions, who previously ran a hedge fund positioning product at Credit Suisse, told CoinDesk that the market expected $250,000 to $400,000 by analogy with past cycles. The move, he said, was not in onchain data. It was derivatives, "paper bitcoin" steering the price once again.

Volatility fell, extreme days stayed

CoinDesk counted the days when BTC moved at least three standard deviations away from its 30-day realized volatility. There are already 10 such days in 2026. All of 2018 had 8, a year in which bitcoin lost 73% of its value.

Annual volatility this year is about 46% against 84% in 2018. The average size of these jumps is smaller too, roughly 7% against 10% eight years ago. The blows are weaker but come more often than a market this calm would suggest.

Bitcoin against Nvidia, the S&P 500 and gold

Since 2024, BTC has swung about as much as Nvidia shares, around 47% a year. Yet bitcoin logged 26 days beyond three sigma, and Nvidia 8. The S&P 500 had 16 such days, gold 12.

Nicolas Quatravaux, head of EMEA at Paradigm, named macro shocks and heavily crowded options positioning as the main sources of sharp days. In his view the market has matured, with more institutions, ETFs and deeper liquidity, so the average day is calmer. The shocks, though, have not gone away.

Why a quiet market misleads risk models

The value-at-risk (VaR) model estimates how much a portfolio could lose on a bad day, and many versions lean on recent price swings. A long calm stretch makes an asset look safer on paper. So falling volatility over 30, 90 and 180 days can nudge an investor to hold more bitcoin.

There is a second problem. VaR shows a loss threshold but not how deep losses run beyond it. Luuk Strijers, CEO of the options exchange Deribit, said the industry is moving toward Expected Shortfall, which measures how bad the worst days get, not only how often they occur. If tail risk is left out of portfolio targets, a calmer bitcoin justifies a bigger allocation, and sudden jumps hit harder. Three-sigma risks, he added, can be hedged with options.

What changed in a year and what did not

Perpetual futures, which let traders bet on price moves without owning the coin, remain a big part of trading on derivatives exchanges. Venues have a financial incentive to keep offering leverage.

Connors admitted he was wrong along with everyone else. The four-year cycle, in his view, is not dead but has changed, and it can no longer be leaned on as before. The growth of institutional products has done little to reduce the grip of derivatives on short-term price.

"There's still a chance you can have another October 10th. The levered products have not gone away."

- Mark Connors, Risk Dimensions, in an interview with CoinDesk

Visibility has improved, as order books and positioning are easier to read. Chris Sullivan of Hyperion Decimus advises traders to do the following.

• Stay away from leverage.
• Watch open interest, funding rates and market sentiment.
• Be patient when those readings hit extremes in either direction.
• Long-term holders are told to buy and move coins off the exchange into a self-custody crypto wallet.

The year in numbers

The market got calmer on average, but no less prone to shocks. This year already has 10 days beyond three sigma, there have been 26 since 2024, and leveraged products are still around. Nobody can name the date of the next hit. The conditions for it remain, so position size is better set by the worst days than by the average ones.