On October 10, 2025, more than $19 billion in leveraged positions in crypto perpetual contracts was liquidated in a single day, much of it held at 20x to 50x leverage. Institutional players had already been pulling back before the crash, with Bitcoin ETF holdings falling by roughly 24,000 BTC and CME futures open interest dropping below $10 billion. That divergence isn’t a coincidence. Research from the Bank for International Settlements has found that smaller, less sophisticated traders tend to pile into net-long positions as prices rise, while dealers and leveraged funds systematically take the other side of the ... (full story)