MarketsTrump
|4 min ReadTariff Shock Ignites Record Crypto Liquidations: Where Bold Money Strikes Next
Maya Chen
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
The 10/11 flush: numbers that matter
Stamp this date. Another scar joins 5/19 and 3/12.
In the past 12 hours, forced liquidations hit
16.663 billion. Shorts lost $2.413 billion. That’s the tape.Price told the story first.
BTC wicked to
112,876. ETH tagged 3,435**, then reclaimed **3,867. No mercy for size. No time for stops. Just speed.The trigger came after.
The U.S. president said he’s considering sharply higher tariffs on Chinese imports. That headline hit cross-asset risk. The crowd sold. The machines finished the job.
Catalysts and cracks: tariffs, depegs, and bids
Policy isn’t one-dimensional. A Fed governor signaled openness to a 25 bp cut at the next meeting. Cuts invite duration. Tariffs punish global beta. That’s a volatile mix. Good traders hunt those dislocations. Great traders prepare for them.
Stress always finds weak links. USDe briefly broke to $0.65 on Binance around 05:30, then snapped back. Ethena said mint and redeem worked, collateral stayed over-collateralized, and perp basis flipped into uPNL that flows to protocol revenue. Translation: the peg wobble paid the house, not the arbers.
Plumbing held. Binance said all services are back to normal and it’s watching conditions. That’s oxygen in a panic.
Where the opportunity moves now
This is when you lean in. Not out. Fresh rails are coming online while the crowd licks wounds.
MetaMask rolls out multichain accounts by late October. One pane for EVM and non-EVM. Pair your EVM with Solana under one account. Bitcoin, Tron, Monad support on deck. Friction falls. Flows rise.
Aster opens Phase 2 airdrop checks. 153,932 wallets qualify. Claims start Oct 14. Airdrops refill risk budgets. They also seed the next meta.
Signal beats noise. Four.meme denied an “Oracle” partnership; that handle vanished, and the token cratered from 3 million** to **160,000 market cap. Grifts die faster in bear volatility. Good. Let the floor clear.
Macro pipes are waking up. A global bank group — Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, MUFG, TD, UBS — is plotting a joint stablecoin project. Don’t overthink it. When the biggest pipes tokenize dollars, settlement speeds up and spread capture moves on-chain.
Prediction markets just got real money. Kalshi raised
5 billion valuation. That’s not a toy. That’s an exchange thesis with momentum.Public-market on-ramps widen. HashKey is weighing an IPO to raise up to $500 million. Equity tells institutions where to click when they won’t hold tokens. Follow the tickers. That’s your proxy flow.
Here’s the playbook. Sell fear only if it funds courage. Size into strength after the wick. Track policy, not tweets. Watch stablecoin rails and wallets that remove friction. Farm the airdrops that matter. Rotate into liquid leaders when basis resets. Fortune favors the bold. Hesitation pays someone else’s pnl.
You wanted alt season. You wanted entries. The market just printed both. Act.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.