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The post Was Binance Behind the $19B October Crypto Crash – or the Target of It? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News
A 40-minute window on October 10 turned into one of the biggest crypto liquidations ever – over $19.3 billion wiped out in hours. Prices of wrapped assets on Binance suddenly collapsed, triggering mass liquidations and confusion across the market.
Binance called it a technical glitch. But on-chain analysts say the timing, data, and money flow tell a different story.
What’s the conspiracy theory that’s got Crypto Twitter buzzing?
On October 6, Binance announced it would change how it priced two key wrapped assets – wBETH and BNSOL – starting mid-month. It seemed like a routine update but for some analysts, that post was the start of a predictable setup.
“That created a four-day window (Oct 10–14) where thin books could be smashed to nuke collateral across futures, margin, and loans,” StarPlatinum wrote on X.
In the 24–48 hours before October 10, on-chain data showed over $10 billion moving into exchange wallets. Researchers linked several of these inflows to Binance-labeled addresses – 0xdfd529, 0x28c6c0, and 0x21a31e – suggesting major pre-positioning before the crash.
At the same time, Coinbase moved 1,066 BTC (worth around $130 million before the drop) from cold to hot storage just minutes before the event. Analysts say it could be routine liquidity movement but the timing raised eyebrows.
Between 21:36 and 22:16 UTC, Binance markets broke down.
These sharp drops happened only on Binance, according to some. Other exchanges and DeFi pools stayed mostly stable. That’s what made traders suspicious – the depegs seemed local, not market-wide.
Within hours, Binance rushed to push an oracle fix earlier (from October 14 to 11) and announced a $283 million compensation plan for affected users.
During the drop, big market makers like Wintermute and Jump were missing from Binance’s order books. A new account reportedly opened $1.1 billion in BTC and ETH shorts right before the crash, with profits estimated at $160-200 million.
Binance insists it was a data-feed issue, not manipulation. But many in the community remain unconvinced.
Not everyone thinks Binance caused the crash. Prominent journalist Colin Wu suggested the October 11 event looked more like a coordinated hit aimed directly at Binance and one of its top market makers.
He said attackers likely exploited a weak point in Binance’s Unified Account margin system, which allowed traders to use volatile assets – like USDE, wBETH, and BNSOL – as collateral instead of stable options like USDT. When those assets depegged, margin values collapsed, setting off a chain reaction of forced liquidations.
Wu’s analysis described the crash as “timed perfectly,” hitting between Binance’s oracle update announcement on Oct 6 and its rollout on Oct 14 – giving attackers an open window to strike.
Whether it was a technical mishap or a targeted play, the October event exposed a hard truth: when billions in collateral depend on one exchange’s internal pricing, even a few minutes of imbalance can shake the entire market.
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