Crypto crash liquidations face massive data gap as public records contradict $18B Solana claim

An important story is making waves across the blockchain ecosystem. Solana Research Institute, a Solana-aligned research group, used an Aug. 14 post to revive a July open letter by Angus Scott to the UK Financial Conduct Authority and other regulators. SRI reported roughly $18 billion in liquidations over 14 hours during the Oct.

10, 2025 crypto crash, including $3. 21 billion in a single minute, and argued that opaque centralized venues failed while transparent on-chain finance kept functioning. The crash records point to a more specific conclusion.

Market Dynamics

Public data made it possible to reconstruct a large auto-deleveraging event on Hyperliquid, as well as deficits and oracle delays at Aave. ESMA later said Binance's internal collateral pricing amplified forced selling. Transparency exposed the mechanics of stress across market structures; it did not turn one venue category into a proxy for safety.

Auto-deleveraging, or ADL, is a last-resort derivatives mechanism that reduces profitable traders' positions when liquidations and risk buffers cannot keep a venue solvent. It differs from ordinary liquidation, which closes a losing position after its collateral falls below a required threshold. Regulators need comparable records to separate either mechanism from an outage, an oracle delay or a venue-local pricing failure.

Solana Research Institute: What the $18B liquidation total hides Solana Research Institute's post paired the $18 billion total with a $3. 21 billion peak in one minute. Amberdata's six-exchange analysis also put the peak at $3.

Market Impact

21 billion at 21:15 UTC and said 93. 5% of that minute's liquidations came from forced selling. For its full 14-hour window, however, Amberdata reported $9.

89 billion, including $6. 93 billion in the 40 minutes from 20:50 to 21:30 UTC. Solana Research Institute announced the $18 billion figure, but its July 23 letter provides no common venue universe or aggregation method that reconciles it with Amberdata's $9.

The available records establish a measurement gap rather than a calculation error. An ESMA review separately cited market estimates of about $19 billion in automated derivatives liquidations for the day. Those numbers describe different scopes.

Crypto markets are watching this development closely as investors weigh its potential impact on prices.