Majors have rebuilt, and the recovery is real capital, not a price illusion
One year after the largest liquidation event in crypto history, the market’s plumbing tells a split story. Bitcoin and ether order books now hold more resting liquidity than on the day of the crash or at the start of this year, according to CoinDesk Research. Smaller tokens and spot trading activity, however, have not followed.
The events of Oct. 10, 2025 remain a defining moment for digital asset markets. Days after hitting a record high above $126,000, bitcoin had edged back to $122,600 on the morning of that Friday. Hours later it had plunged below $105,000, with much of the decline compressed into minutes during thin evening trading in the United States, after President Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. More than $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in a single day.
To gauge the recovery since, CoinDesk Research compared market depth across major centralized exchanges on four dates: Jan. 1, 2025; Oct. 10, 2025; Jan. 1, 2026; and this week. Depth measures the value of buy and sell orders resting near the current price. The deeper the book, the more volume a large trade can absorb without moving the market, which makes it one of the most reliable indicators of genuine market health.
The headline finding is unambiguous. Bitcoin’s order book is deeper now than on any of the earlier dates measured. On Oct. 7, about $11.7 million sat within 1% of the price. That is roughly 75% more than on crash day a year earlier, up from about $9 million at the start of this year and about $6.9 million at the start of 2025.
Crucially, this is not a price effect. Bitcoin is about one-third cheaper than it was before the crash, so a deeper book measured in dollars reflects more capital committed by market makers, not simply less valuable coins. “The majors’ deepening is real capital, not a price effect,” CoinDesk Researcher Saksham Diwan said.
The improvement is concentrated near the price, where market makers quote most actively. Further out, at 5% from the price, depth of around $24 million is roughly where it stood in January 2025. That pattern suggests the recovery is driven by competitive quoting at the touch rather than a broad rebuilding of resting orders across the book.
Ether’s recovery is in some ways stronger. Depth within 0.5% of the price has more than doubled since crash day, to about $4.2 million. At 1%, it has risen by about three-quarters to roughly $5.3 million, above both January readings.
The rebuilt books received an early test this week. As the market sold off, bitcoin’s 1% depth fell about 12% between Oct. 7 and Oct. 8. Ether’s tightest band thinned slightly, though orders further from the price increased. A modest pullback during a sell-off is normal behaviour, and the fact that depth remained well above crash-era levels points to a structurally more resilient market in the majors.
For traders and institutional allocators, the significance is straightforward. Deeper books mean lower slippage, cheaper execution and a reduced likelihood of the cascading liquidations that turned a macro headline into a $19 billion wipeout a year ago. The concentration of that improvement in bitcoin and ether also reinforces their status as the sector’s institutional gateway, a theme explored in our Bitcoin coverage.
Altcoins left behind
For altcoins, the picture is reversed. In CoinDesk Research’s basket of altcoins, dollar depth was greatest on Jan. 1, 2025, and has been lower on each date measured since. Depth at 5% from the price is down about a third since the start of 2025, to around $2 million. Closer to the price, at 1%, it has fallen by about a sixth.
Measured in tokens rather than dollars, altcoin depth looks healthier. It peaked on Jan. 1 this year and has eased only modestly since. But analysts said that token-unit recovery was mostly a function of falling prices, which masks a steady erosion of committed capital. When a token’s price halves, the number of tokens needed to fill the same dollar value of orders doubles. The apparent stability in token terms is therefore a mirage.
The divergence carries real consequences for anyone trading outside the majors. Thinner books mean altcoin positions are more expensive to enter and exit, and more vulnerable to sharp gaps during stress. The 10/10 crash demonstrated how quickly liquidity can vanish when it is thin to begin with. For smaller tokens, the conditions that amplified that crash have not been repaired; in dollar terms they have worsened.
This bifurcation mirrors a broader pattern across crypto market structure, where trading activity, product development and institutional interest cluster around a narrow set of assets. The long tail of the market increasingly trades like an emerging small-cap equity market: viable for patient holders, hazardous for size.
Spot trading remains well below the October 2025 peak
Spot trading has not recovered in step with the majors’ deeper books. Weekly spot volume on centralized exchanges averaged around $279 billion over the four weeks to Sept. 27, according to CoinDesk Research, nearly two-thirds below the $801 billion traded in the week of the crash.
Activity bottomed out in August, when weekly volume fell to around $135 billion, and has roughly doubled since. Even so, it remains well short of the levels seen around the crash. The combination of deeper order books and subdued turnover is unusual: it suggests market makers are positioning for future flow rather than responding to current demand.
There are several plausible readings. Deeper books with less trading can indicate confidence among professional liquidity providers, who are willing to commit capital ahead of an anticipated pickup in activity. Alternatively, it may reflect a market that has matured into a holding asset class, where spot changes hands less frequently but with greater efficiency when it does. Either way, the profile is closer to a developed market than the speculative churn that characterised earlier cycles.
The volume picture also tempers any celebration of the liquidity recovery. Depth is a measure of readiness to trade, not of trading itself. Until turnover picks up, the deeper books remain a latent strength rather than an active one.
What it means for the year ahead
Crypto’s liquidity vanished in hours on Oct. 10, 2025. Where it would next settle was the open question. “A year ago, we wrote that liquidity was thin and fragmented, and that it was unclear where capital would rotate once the dust settled. We now have an answer: bitcoin and ether,” said Joshua de Vos, research lead at CoinDesk.
“Market makers have returned to majors, with liquidity above pre-crash levels, whilst altcoin liquidity continues to trend down as a whole. Beyond a select few alts, I expect this divergence to persist into next year as majors continue to dominate institutional interest and volumes.”
The market’s answer to its worst day has been consolidation, not reconstruction. Capital has rotated decisively toward the assets with the deepest regulatory clarity, the widest product surface and the most reliable execution. That is, in most respects, a healthy outcome: a market that can absorb a macro shock without a $19 billion liquidation cascade is a market that has grown up.
But the same process has widened the gap between the majors and everything else. Altcoin traders face thinner books, higher effective costs and greater gap risk than they did at the start of 2025, and the trend is still pointing down. For a market segment whose investment case often rests on relative upside, the erosion of its trading infrastructure is a quiet but material headwind.
The likely trajectory, on the evidence of the past year, is a two-tier market. Bitcoin and ether trade increasingly like established assets with professional liquidity and institutional depth. The long tail trades like what it is: a high-risk corner of the market where liquidity is a privilege, not a guarantee. Investors who lived through 10/10 will recognise the difference.
