‘No accident’ – Why OKX founder faults Binance for October’s crypto crash

Star Xu, founder of crypto exchange OKX, has called out Binance [BNB] for triggering the crash on the 10th of October.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Xu said, 

“No complexity. No accident. 10/10 was caused by irresponsible marketing campaigns by certain companies.”

Source: X/Star Xu

He added that the market structure changed after the crash. Notably, since the deleveraging event, Bitcoin has never regained a positive correlation with traditional markets like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq and has not matched their gains. 

Xu singled out Ethena’s USDe’s depeg on Binance. He blasted the exchange for offering an APY of over 12% on the product, boosted by looped leverage, but failed to implement key risk mitigation measures. 

He pleaded with Binance, as the industry leader, to embrace discussing ‘systematic risk’ within the sector without viewing it as an attack. Xu concluded, 

“Crypto is still early. What we choose to normalize today will determine whether this industry earns lasting trust—or repeats the same mistakes again.”

Binance dismisses the claims

However, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, dismissed the claims of being the trigger of the crash. The exchange clarified that the macro shock, the Donald Trump tariffs update, was behind the risk-off move and subsequent $19 billion liquidation cascade. 

Although Binance acknowledged technical issues with its trading system during the crash, it distanced itself from allegations that it was the primary trigger. 

AMBCrypto noted that the first technical hitch occurred from 21:18 to 21:51 UTC on the 10th of October. This led to a brief degradation of the asset transfer system due to overload. The second glitch caused USDe, BNSOL, and WBETH to depeg between 21:26 UTC and 22:15 UTC. 

For Chainlink’s Zach Rynes, however, the USDe depeg occurred after the liquidation cascade, suggesting that Binance played little role in the flash crash. 

Source: X/ Zach Rynes

So far, there has been no independent, third-party analysis of the crash to provide a balanced post-mortem and help prevent a similar occurrence. 

Will BNB remain unfazed?

However, the renewed FUD at Binance has intensified this week, pushing BNB lower by 8% on the price charts. 

Last week, the altcoin lost nearly as much. At press time, the BNB price slipped below $900. Surprisingly, BNB’s market dominance was not affected by the price decline; in fact, it increased to 4% over the same period. 

This meant BNB was not being aggressively sold relative to other altcoins despite the FUD and broader weak sentiment.  

Source: BNB price vs market share, TradingView 

Final Thoughts

• OKX founder claimed that Binance was solely responsible for the October 10 crash due to accelerated liquidations originating on the exchange.
• But Binance dismissed these claims, with BNB holding better and boasting of 4% market dominance despite the FUD.