Key findings
- Between the daily closes of 9 Oct 2025 and 9 Oct 2026, bitcoin fell 32.2%, from $121,706 to $82,546; ether fell 43.1%, from $4,369 to $2,486; solana fell 50.6%, from $221 to $109.
- Total value locked in DeFi, the dollar value of assets deposited in DeFi protocols, fell 46.2%, from $169.0 billion to $90.8 billion, according to DefiLlama.
- Stablecoin supply rose 3.0%, from $302.6 billion to $311.6 billion. On the crash day itself it moved by only 0.1%.
- On 10 Oct 2025 the day’s low sat 14.6% below its high for bitcoin, 21.3% for ether and 22.4% for solana.
- DeFi’s deposits fell 12.6% in the two days after the crash, from $169.0 billion to $147.7 billion, before the long slide to $90.8 billion.
CoinDesk marked the anniversary on Saturday, recalling that bitcoin fell from about $122,000 to below $105,000 within hours and that more than $19 billion of leveraged positions were liquidated in one day, a move it linked to President Trump’s announcement of 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. Its separate market-depth study found bitcoin’s order book about 75% deeper than on crash day. This note adds a different view: what happened to prices, DeFi deposits and stablecoin supply, measured the same way at both ends.
How far prices fell, and how much of DeFi followed
The comparison uses daily closes at 00:00 UTC, the last complete day before each 10 Oct. Bitcoin is 32.2% lower, which matches CoinDesk’s “about one-third cheaper”. Ether and solana are lower by more, 43.1% and 50.6%. DeFi’s total value locked is measured in dollars, so part of its fall of 46.2% is simply token prices dropping; the figure does not say how many coins were withdrawn.
The ordering is the useful part. The more volatile the asset, the further it fell, and DeFi’s deposits landed between ether and solana. The test is whether deposits move with prices from here. If deposits rise while prices are flat, that would show money coming back into protocols rather than a price effect.
The crash day: the smaller the coin, the deeper the drop
On 10 Oct 2025, measured over the UTC day, bitcoin’s low was 14.6% below its high. Ether’s was 21.3% below and solana’s 22.4% below. Those are intraday ranges across venues as Yahoo aggregates them, so they are wider than the close-to-close change: bitcoin’s close on 10 Oct was 7.0% below the 9 Oct close.
Stablecoin supply barely reacted. DefiLlama shows $302.63 billion on 9 Oct 2025 and $302.85 billion on 10 Oct. So the sell-off did not shrink the supply of dollar-pegged tokens on that day. The test is a day on which supply falls while prices fall, which would point to money leaving instead of waiting. The latest daily reading, $311.0 billion for 10 Oct 2026 and still incomplete, is 0.2% below the day before; one day is too short to read as a trend.
Reading the signals
The state: one year on, bitcoin, ether and solana are 32% to 51% below the pre-crash close, DeFi deposits are down 46%, and stablecoin supply is 3% higher. The system lost price and deposits, not dollar liquidity.
The test: whether the next sell-off shows the same split. The 10 Oct 2025 pattern was a deep intraday drop in smaller coins with stablecoin supply flat. A drop with stablecoin supply also falling would be a different event.
The trigger: DeFi deposits and price moving apart. A rising total value locked with falling prices, or the reverse, would mean the deposit figure is saying something other than “price”. How liquidations turn a move into a bigger one is covered in what crypto liquidations are. The latest state of the market is in this morning’s First Print, the volatility context in this week’s volatility note, and the deposits side is explained in what DeFi lending is.
Data note. Data as of 13:50 UTC on 10 Oct 2026. Prices: Yahoo Finance BTC-USD, ETH-USD and SOL-USD daily bars (00:00 UTC), comparing the 9 Oct 2025 and 9 Oct 2026 closes; the partial 10 Oct 2026 bar is excluded. Crash-day highs and lows are from the 10 Oct 2025 daily bar. DeFi TVL and stablecoin supply: DefiLlama’s total series for the same dates; DefiLlama can revise history, and TVL is in US dollars. The $19 billion liquidation figure, the tariff trigger and the order-book result are CoinDesk’s and were not checked independently. Not investment advice.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.