The 10 Biggest Crypto Crashes at a Glance

The table compares the depth, type and recovery time of each crash in date order. The final column records how long bitcoin took to trade above its previous peak again.

1. The 2011 Mt. Gox Hack and First Bitcoin Bubble

• Price move: $31.91 to about $2
• Peak to low: About 5 months
• What it showed: One exchange could move the price for the whole market

Bitcoin's first speculative boom peaked at $31.91 on June 8, 2011. Mt. Gox, an exchange based in Tokyo, then handled most of the world's bitcoin trading. On June 19, an attacker used a compromised account to sell a large amount of bitcoin there, and the price on the platform briefly dropped to one cent.

Mt. Gox stopped trading for several days and reversed many of the trades. Confidence did not return, and bitcoin traded near $2 by November 2011. Few people owned bitcoin then, so the dollar losses were small, but the percentage fall remains the deepest in bitcoin's history.

2. The Mt. Gox Collapse and 2014 Bear Market

• Price move: About $1,150 to about $170
• Peak to low: About 13 months
• What it left behind: Creditor repayments that are still not finished

After bitcoin passed $1,100 in late 2013, Mt. Gox halted withdrawals in February 2014 and filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo. About 850,000 BTC belonging to customers and the company were missing, the exchange said. Most had been stolen over several years, though it later found about 200,000 BTC in an old wallet.

The subsequent bear market lasted until January 2015. Creditors still await full repayment. In October 2026, the court-appointed trustee moved the repayment deadline to October 31, 2027, granting a fourth one-year extension. Estate-linked wallets retain about 34,000 BTC, and large transfers from them can still unsettle traders.

3. The 2018 Crypto Winter

• Price move: Close to $20,000 to about $3,200
• Peak to low: About 12 months
• Ether decline: About 94%

Thousands of projects raised money in 2017 through initial coin offerings (ICOs), public token sales that offered little investor protection. Bitcoin rose almost twentyfold that year. Its December 17, 2017 peak coincided with CME Group's launch of regulated bitcoin futures trading.

Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco later argued that futures let pessimistic investors bet against bitcoin for the first time, helping reverse the price. Regulators pursued fraudulent token sales throughout 2018 as many ICO projects failed. Bitcoin would not surpass its 2017 high until December 2020.

4. COVID-19 Black Thursday

• Price move: About $7,900 to about $3,850
• Peak to low: About 36 hours
• What came next: Near-zero interest rates and a long rise in prices

Global markets fell sharply on March 12, 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic spread. Bitcoin lost about half its value in less than two days. Many traders had used borrowed money, or leverage, to buy. Falling prices left their collateral insufficient to cover the loans, prompting exchanges to close positions automatically. Those forced sales, known as liquidations, deepened the decline.

Ethereum network congestion made matters worse. On MakerDAO, a decentralized lending protocol, some collateral auctions closed with zero bids and borrowers lost all their collateral. The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero on March 15, 2020. By late April, bitcoin had regained its pre-crash price.

5. The China Crackdown Crash of 2021

• Price move: About $64,800 to about $29,300
• Peak to low: About 3 months
• What it changed: Bitcoin mining moved out of China

Bitcoin reached about $64,800 in April 2021. In May, Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin for car purchases and cited the energy use of mining. A few days later, Chinese authorities warned financial firms against crypto services, and a State Council committee called for a crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading. Most of the world's mining was then based in China.

On May 19, 2021, bitcoin fell about 30% within hours to near $30,000, and about $9 billion of leveraged positions were liquidated in one day. Miners shipped their machines to the United States, Kazakhstan and other countries, as Cambridge Bitcoin Mining Map data shows. The wider uptrend survived the shock, and bitcoin passed its April high in October 2021 before it reached about $69,000 in November.

6. The 2022 Bear Market and Lender Collapses

• Price move: About $69,000 to $15,476
• Peak to low: About 12 months
• Total crypto market value: About $3 trillion to about $800 billion

The Federal Reserve started raising interest rates in March 2022 to combat high inflation. As investors sold risky assets, crypto lenders that had promised high deposit yields struggled to meet withdrawals. Celsius froze withdrawals on June 12, 2022, with $4.7 billion of customer money on its platform.

That summer also brought the failures of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and broker Voyager Digital. Each collapse forced further crypto sales. Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky later received a 12-year prison sentence for fraud and market manipulation. Bitcoin took until March 2024 to exceed its 2021 high.

7. The Terra and LUNA Collapse

• LUNA decline: More than 99.9% within days
• Investor losses: About $40 billion
• What it changed: Algorithmic stablecoins lost the trust of regulators and users

TerraUSD (UST) sought to maintain a $1 value through a trading link with its sister token, LUNA. As an algorithmic stablecoin, it relied on that mechanism instead of cash reserves. Terra's largest application, Anchor Protocol, attracted billions of dollars by paying close to 20% a year on UST deposits.

Large withdrawals from Anchor pushed UST below $1 in May 2022. To restore its value, the system created new LUNA, rapidly expanding the supply and sending the token's price close to zero. The Luna Foundation Guard then sold most of its roughly 80,000 BTC reserve in an unsuccessful effort to support UST. Those sales put further pressure on bitcoin.

Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2025. The collapse also influenced US stablecoin law. Under the GENIUS Act, payment stablecoins must now hold full reserves.

8. The FTX Collapse

• Price move: About $21,300 to $15,476
• Peak to low: About 2 weeks
• Customer money taken: More than $8 billion

FTX ranked among the world's largest crypto exchanges. On November 2, 2022, CoinDesk reported that Alameda Research held a large share of its assets in FTT, the token created by FTX. The trading firm was also owned by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Customers rushed to withdraw their money, but FTX could not pay. It filed for bankruptcy on November 11.

Prosecutors proved that customer deposits had been secretly transferred from FTX to Alameda. In March 2024, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Many large exchanges responded to the collapse by publishing proof of reserves, regular reports showing that customer assets are fully held.

The FTX Recovery Trust began a fifth distribution that brought the main customer classes to 105% of their claims in July 2026. Because claims were valued at November 2022 prices, creditors missed the subsequent rise in crypto.

9. The October 10, 2025 Liquidation Crash

• Price move: About $122,000 to about $105,000
• Peak to low: A few hours
• Liquidations: More than $19 billion in 24 hours

Four days after bitcoin set a record above $126,000 on October 6, 2025, US President Donald Trump announced a 100% tariff on imports from China. Traders were holding a record amount of leveraged positions. When global markets fell, forced selling spread across crypto exchanges.

Liquidations exceeded $19 billion within 24 hours, making it the largest liquidation event in crypto history according to CoinGlass data. Many smaller tokens lost more than 75% in minutes. Binance briefly priced USDe, a dollar token backed by crypto trading positions rather than cash, at $0.65. The exchange later paid affected users more than $283 million.

Several venues for perpetual futures, contracts with no expiry date, activated auto-deleveraging. The system closes profitable positions to cover losses when an insurance fund runs short. This crash marked the cycle top, unlike the shocks of 2020 and 2021. Our October 10 crash explainer follows the event minute by minute.

10. The 2025-2026 Bear Market

• Price move: Above $126,000 to about $59,000
• Peak to low: About 8 months
• Total crypto market value: About $4.2 trillion to about $2 trillion

After falling below $100,000 in November 2025, bitcoin reached $60,000 on February 5 to 6, 2026. Its 14% drop on February 5 was the largest single-day decline since the FTX collapse. Holders who sold below their purchase price realized $3.2 billion in losses. Glassnode recorded it as the largest realized loss in bitcoin's history.

June 2026 brought the cycle low. Bitcoin fell about 17% and ether about 22% in the first week, their worst week since the FTX collapse. News that Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, had sold 32 BTC opened the week. It was the company's first sale in nearly four years. By June 5, bitcoin had touched about $59,000.

Investors withdrew a net $4.5 billion from spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in June 2026, their worst month since launch. These funds hold bitcoin and trade on stock exchanges. No major lender or exchange became insolvent during the cycle, helping explain why the decline stopped near 53%.

The Three Types of Crypto Crash

A crash's cause and speed reveal more about its likely depth and duration than the size of the first daily drop.

• Cycle bear markets: Across 2011, 2014, 2018, 2022 and 2025 to 2026, bitcoin's slow declines ranged from 53% to 93% over 5 to 13 months. Earlier cycles took 20 to 39 months to surpass the old peak. Gradual selling by long-term holders and funds leaves each rally below the previous high.
• Shock crashes: Outside news and leverage drove the rapid falls of March 2020, May 2021 and October 2025. Most damage occurred within hours or days. The 2020 and 2021 crashes interrupted long uptrends, with prices recovering in weeks or months. October 2025 instead marked the cycle top and led into a bear market.
• Failure crashes: A company or protocol collapse, such as Mt. Gox, Terra or FTX, destroys customer money and spreads losses through loans to other firms. Prices have recovered after each event. Legal proceedings, however, can last more than ten years.

Who bears the largest loss also varies. Shock crashes hit leveraged traders hardest, while bear markets hurt buyers near the top most. In a failure crash, customers of the failed firm suffer the greatest losses.

Where the Crypto Market Stands Now

Buyers at bitcoin's 2025 peak remain at a loss. In early November 2026, it trades below $80,000, roughly 38% under its October 2025 record. A rebound to about $87,000 in early October faded during a month of security incidents.

An attacker moved about $6.36 billion from Binance hot wallets across ten blockchains on October 29, 2026. These internet-connected wallets handle daily withdrawals. TRM Labs attributed the attack, the largest crypto theft on record, to North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor. The FBI also linked the group to the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025.

Binance suspended withdrawals and pledged to cover every loss with company funds. About $3 billion of the stolen assets were frozen by stablecoin issuers and other partners. Bitcoin dropped to roughly $76,400 as about $1.5 billion of leveraged positions were liquidated within a day.

Because Binance could repay users, the decline remained small. Mt. Gox and FTX had been unable to do so. Our list of the biggest crypto hacks covers the Binance attack and September 2026's $387.5 million Bitget breach.

Other forces now influence the market that played little role in earlier crashes.

• Fund redemptions: Following the SEC's approval of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products in January 2024, ETF activity became a direct influence on price. Funds sell real bitcoin when investors cash out shares. Our Bitcoin ETF tracker follows those flows.
• Corporate holders: Companies funding bitcoin purchases with debt or new shares were major buyers in 2024 and 2025. Deutsche Bank cited concern about leveraged corporate holders as one cause of the June 2026 fall. It also pointed to expectations of higher US interest rates and record ETF redemptions.
• Competition from AI investments: During 2026, many investors shifted money into AI stocks and large public listings, including the SpaceX initial public offering in June.
• Options hedging: Firms selling options often hedge by selling bitcoin as its price declines. This activity accelerated the February 2026 drop to $60,000, according to 10x Research.
• Larger security threats: A wave of software flaws, many discovered with AI tools, led security researchers to call October 2026 "Black October". Some holders also cite the long-term risk from quantum computing. Proposals such as BIP-360 aim to reduce it.

Lessons From 15 Years of Crypto Crashes

Avoidable investor mistakes account for most losses in these crashes. The following is general information, not financial advice.

• Leverage turns a decline into a total loss: In March 2020, May 2021 and October 2025, highly leveraged traders lost their entire positions. Those trading without leverage kept their coins. Before opening a position, check its liquidation price. Our Bitcoin liquidation heatmap and crypto liquidations tracker show where forced selling may begin.
• Coins on an exchange depend on that company: Customers of Mt. Gox and FTX waited years to be repaid. Keep long-term holdings outside a company's balance sheet with a hardware wallet from our list of the best crypto wallets.
• A stablecoin is only as safe as its reserves: UST held no cash reserves. During the October 2025 crash, USDe traded below $1 on one exchange. Compare the main designs in our guide to the safest stablecoins.
• High fixed yields hide risk: Anchor paid nearly 20% on UST, while Celsius promised high deposit returns. Before October 10, 2025, Binance offered a promotional USDe rate of 12%. All these yields relied on conditions that broke during a crash.
• Extreme fear is a poor signal by itself: Popular sentiment indexes dropped below 10 out of 100 in February 2026. The cycle low still lay four months ahead. Use our Crypto Fear and Greed Index alongside fund activity and liquidation data.
• Halvings have been a timing guide: Bitcoin's 2017, 2021 and 2025 peaks arrived about 17 to 18 months after a halving, which cuts new bitcoin supply by half. Whether ETFs have weakened that pattern is now debated by analysts. Our halving countdown tracks the next event, expected in 2028.

Final Thoughts

Each bitcoin bear market has ended at a higher low, with declines becoming shallower. The fall narrowed from 93% in 2011 to about 53% in 2025 and 2026.

Individual shocks have grown larger. October 2025 set a liquidation record of more than $19 billion in a day. The largest exchange hack rose from $1.5 billion at Bybit in 2025 to $6.3 billion at Binance in 2026. Greater leverage and closer links between platforms, combined with more capable attackers, could make the next crash faster than any before it.

Treat a 50% decline as a normal part of crypto ownership. Keep leverage low enough to withstand a sudden shock, and store long-term coins outside the exchanges where most past failures began.

Our Methodology

For each crash, we measured bitcoin's decline from its highest daily price beforehand to its lowest price during the event. We used US dollar prices across major exchanges and price indexes. Intraday lows vary by exchange, so figures are rounded and approximate. Recovery time measures the months until bitcoin traded above its previous peak.

Events were classified by their main trigger and speed. We drew legal outcomes, hack figures and bankruptcy distributions from primary sources, including the US Department of Justice, the FBI, court-appointed trustees and blockchain analytics firms. For 2025 and 2026 market figures, we used CoinGlass, Glassnode and SoSoValue data reported by CoinDesk and The Block.