The Great Crypto Carnage: Was It a “Coordinated Attack” or Just Bad Timing?

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In a twist that could make even a seasoned detective go, “Wait, what?”, a viral thread on X (yes, that X, where chaos and memes are born) has proposed a very… shall we say, *unusual* theory about the crypto market’s crash last Friday. With over a million views, @ElonTrades claims that the meltdown wasn’t due to the usual suspects (looking at you, stablecoin fails) but rather the clever exploitation of Binance’s-wait for it-*collateral pricing algorithm*. Yeah, because when you’re already feeling shaky, why not throw a faulty algorithm into the mix?

So, Why Did The Crypto Market Really Crash?

According to @ElonTrades, the whole mess started when Binance made the decision to value certain collateral-think USDe, wBETH, and BNSOL-using its *own* spot-order-book data instead of those trustworthy external oracles. And for the love of everything crypto, don’t forget that Binance had already announced this was going to change on Oct 6… but the actual change was rolling out on Oct 14. So, naturally, there was this lovely little eight-day window of vulnerability for all kinds of chaos to ensue.

During this glorious window, the alleged perpetrators simply moved things around in Binance’s internal order books. No big deal, right? Except, this caused borrowing power to shrink faster than a billionaire’s ego after a failed tweet, triggering a whole cascade of margin calls. It’s like setting off fireworks… only the fireworks are *liquidations*.

The Oct 11 Crypto Crash – What Really Happened

TL;DR:

Approximately $60-90M of $USDe was dumped on Binance, along with $wBETH and $BNSOL, exploiting a pricing flaw that valued collateral using Binance’s own order-book data instead of external oracles.

That localized depeg triggered…

– ElonTrades (@ElonTrades) October 12, 2025

So here’s the heart of the matter: according to the thread, about $60-90 million worth of $USDe was dumped on Binance. Throw in some wBETH and BNSOL, and boom-prices took a nosedive. USDe’s price on Binance crashed to *$0.65* (while it held steady at ~$1 everywhere else), wBETH dropped by a ridiculous *90%*, and BNSOL plummeted to $0.13. Because Unified Accounts were still marking collateral to these incredibly distressed prices, they wiped out margin values faster than you can say “forced liquidation.” And, naturally, the fallout from that caused a $19 billion bloodbath globally. Classic crypto behavior, right?

Now, here’s where the theory gets its real *punch*: Timing. According to the thread, this all went down at 21:14 UTC. And if you’re wondering why you didn’t see it coming, it’s because it was like a ninja attack on your portfolio. The depegs and price collapses happened so fast that even looking at minute charts of $SUI or $ATOM wouldn’t have saved you from the carnage. One second, everything was peachy. The next, your account balance was… not so peachy.

But wait-there’s more! As if the crypto gods weren’t already laughing at us, we had an extra *macro accelerant* for the mix: at 16:50 UTC, President Trump-yes, *that* Trump-dropped the bombshell on Truth Social about “100% tariffs on Chinese goods.” Was the market already feeling the pinch? Oh, absolutely. But the tariff news? That was like throwing gasoline on a fire, and the market went *kapow*. BTC crashed from ~$124K to ~$113K, and ETH fell from ~$3,600 to ~$3,050. As @ElonTrades sees it, the *timing* was everything. The depeg triggered the cascade of liquidations, not the other way around.

And here comes the juicy part: profit. Oh yes, the theory suggests that fresh wallets on Hyperliquid had opened a staggering $1.1B in BTC/ETH shorts. They funded this attack with $110 million USDC from Arbitrum-linked sources, and as BTC and ETH tanked, those positions made a cool $192M before they closed out at the bottom. Pure *coincidence*, right? The precision and timing were apparently so on point, you’d think this was planned like a heist movie.

Binance, for its part, admitted to “platform-related issues,” promised compensation to affected users, and added in some price floors and oracle integration for good measure. So, no biggie. Just a little “oopsie” with a $500 million to $1 billion price tag, that’s all.

Not everyone is buying the whole “coordinated attack” theory. Macro analyst Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) gave it a nod but cautioned that maybe, just maybe, the whole thing could have been a rational actor simply trying to *derisk* after the Trump tariff announcement. So, you know, could’ve been a market-wide freakout with no masterminds involved. Who knows?

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at a staggering $3.89 trillion. The moral of the story? Always check for hidden vulnerabilities in your collateral systems and-just maybe-avoid betting on anything involving Trump’s tweets.

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2025-10-13 14:20