Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said that although Binance did not trigger a crypto market clearing event on October 10, all exchanges, whether centralized or decentralized, experienced large-scale liquidations the day after China imposed rare earth metal regulations and the US announced new tariffs.
Teng said Thursday at CoinDesk's Consensus Hong Kong conference that about 75% of the liquidations took place around 9pm ET, but that two unrelated and isolated issues also took place in parallel: stablecoin depegging and “some delays in terms of asset transfers.”
“On that day, the value of the U.S. stock market plummeted by $1.5 trillion,” he said. “There were $150 billion in liquidations in the U.S. stock market alone. The crypto market was much smaller, about $19 billion. And crypto liquidations occurred across all exchanges.”
He said some users were affected by this and Binance helped to help, but it was a step other exchanges did not take.
According to him, Binance had 300 million users and $34 trillion in trading volume last year. Transaction data does not indicate large-scale withdrawals from the platform.
“The data speaks for itself,” he said.
More broadly, Teng said that while the crypto market is tracking broader geopolitical tensions, there is still an influx of institutional investors into the space.
“At a macro level, I think people are still uncertain about the future movement of interest rates,” he said. “And there are always trends like geopolitics and tensions that weigh on assets like cryptocurrencies.”
However, Teng said long-term industry participants would be aware that crypto prices fluctuate cyclically, noting how the sector has changed over the past four to six years.
“I think what we have to look at is the underlying development,” he said. “Right now, retail demand has calmed down somewhat compared to last year, but institutional and corporate adoption remains strong.”
He said that despite the market, institutional investors were still entering the space, “which means the smart money is rolling out.”
Read more: Cryptocurrency’s $19 billion “10/10” nightmare: Why everyone blames Binance for the never-ending Bitcoin crash
