Traders are blaming Binance, but did Coinbase also exacerbate the market crash?

As crypto prices plummeted after President Donald Trump announced new tariffs, Binance, long considered the industry's core liquidity engine, quickly became the center of the turmoil.

For many Binance users, the exchange's cross-margin system, which links all assets in a trader's account as collateral, made losses even worse.

Was the Binance meltdown spontaneous or a calculated exploit?

As prices plummeted, traders reported that Binance's interface froze during the decline, making it impossible to close or hedge positions. Because all assets were tied together, a single margin call caused liquidation of the entire account rather than a partial loss.

This structural weakness led to widespread anger, with some users accusing Binance of profiting from market volatility through clearing fees.

Binance has promised to compensate affected customers, but has yet to release a full report following the incident.

That silence created room for speculation, especially after on-chain researcher YQ shared data suggesting the crash may not have been entirely organic.

YQ analysis found that three assets listed on Binance (USDe, wBETH, and BNSOL) lost their pegs to each other within minutes during internal price updates.

At that moment, USDe fell to $0.65, wBETH crashed to $430 (almost 90% below Ethereum's value), and BNSOL fell to $34.9.

“The 23-minute gap between the general liquidation and the specific asset crash suggests a sequential execution rather than a random panic,” the analysts wrote.

Taking this into account, analyst estimates suggest that between $800 million and $1.2 billion could have been extracted from the market through coordinated trading.

“While we cannot conclusively prove coordination, the evidence raises a reasonable doubt. The accuracy, timing, location specificity, and pattern of payoff all too perfectly match what a coordinated attack would look like. Through spectacular opportunism or deliberate planning, someone turned Binance's transparency into a vulnerability, extracting nearly $1 billion in the process,” he concluded.

Suspicions of market correction deepen with Coinbase transfer

While all eyes were on Binance, the latest blockchain data reveals that Coinbase, the largest U.S. exchange, was also making notable moves before the recession.

Analytics firm Meta Financial AI (MEFAI) found that Coinbase transferred 1,066 BTC from cold wallets to hot wallets just before the price started falling.

Around the same time, a newly created wallet (allegedly owned by a US investor) purchased 1,100 BTC from Binance and transferred it to Coinbase.

These actions raised eyebrows because Coinbase primarily processes large institutional trades through its over-the-counter (OTC) desk rather than retail orders.

Such transactions typically involve ETF issuers, hedge funds, or corporate treasuries that want to purchase Bitcoin discreetly without affecting market prices.

In view of this, MEFAI noted that the timing of these moves may have intensified selling pressure that was already building in the market.

“The sales that take place here are to institutional investors. Institutions' own arbitrage and pricing bots balance the price. It operates on a spot basis.[Coinbase]is the most difficult place to sell 1,000 BTC as an individual user, as it is difficult to find a non-institutional investor on the other side who will buy that 1,000 BTC,” MEFAI concluded.

Despite the claims, there is no clear evidence linking the Binance and Coinbase events.

Still, the synchronization of wallet activity, overlapping timing, and sudden market impact led to growing suspicions in the industry that the crash was more than just a coincidence.

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