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A massive crypto sell-off on February 3, 2025, led to far greater losses than initially reported, according to Bybit CEO Ben Zhou.
Data from Coinglass only showed total liquidations at $1.9 billion in losses, but Zhou estimates it potentially reached $10 billion.
“I am afraid that today’s real total liquidation is a lot more than $2 billion, by my estimation it should be at least around $8-10 billion,” Zhou wrote on X. He revealed Bybit alone saw $2.1 billion while monitoring sites showed only $333 million.
This massive discrepancy stems from exchanges limiting their API data feeds to one liquidation per second. “We have API limitation on how much feeds are pushed out per second. From my observation, other exchanges also practice the same to limit liquidation data,” Zhou explained.
K33 Research’s Head of Research, Vetle Lunde, traced this practice back to 2021 when major platforms like Binance and OKX began restricting data output.
“Constantly figuring at the top of liquidation leaderboards is not aligning with a strategy of attracting as many as possible to trade as much volume as possible,” Lunde explained, suggesting exchanges wanted to avoid negative publicity from large liquidation events.
In response to the transparency concerns, Zhou announced that Bybit would remove its API restrictions. Moving forward, Bybit will start to push all liquidation data. We believe in transparency,” he stated.
The market crash was triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese goods. Bitcoin plunged below $92,000, while Ethereum dropped to $2,400, losing 17% of its value overnight. These price movements sparked a chain reaction of forced liquidations across trading platforms.
CryptoQuant analyst Mignolet noted this market shock ranks among the largest ever recorded, marking the first major disruption since August 2024. Market sentiment has shifted, with the Crypto Fear& Greed Index moving to Fear, according to CoinMarketCap. This prompted calls for other exchanges to follow Bybit’s lead in providing unrestricted market data.
Bitcoin has since rebounded to $97,000, and the Coinbase Premium Gap reached its highest level this year, indicating strong institutional buying interest despite the market turmoil.
