The Great Crash of Friday, October 11th is still having an impact. As is well known, Bitcoin and altcoins experienced a major crash on October 11th, and the market witnessed the largest liquidation in crypto history.
Binance May Face Lawsuit!
Ten days after the crash, Wintermute CEO said Binance is facing potential lawsuits over the October 11 liquidations, as debates continue about the causes and aftermath of the crash.
Binance took immediate action regarding the problems and losses experienced on the exchange, announcing a $400 million compensation plan. However, according to the CEO, even the compensation announcement won’t prevent Binance from facing lawsuits.
At this point, Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy said in a podcast that Binance’s automatic deleveraging (ADL) system is clearly malfunctioning.
According to the CEO, Binance’s infrastructure deficiencies and its unpreparedness for the downturn caused the ADL system to activate at an inopportune time. The ADL’s involvement only exacerbated the situation, leading to the exchange’s massive forced liquidation on October 11th.
“The ADL is essentially an exchange’s last line of defense. The ADL mechanism is often never triggered, and many exchanges haven’t used it for years. It’s designed as a last resort. Before that, exchanges had insurance funds.
In extreme cases, such as the massive drop seen on October 11th and the subsequent liquidations, forced liquidations executed through the order book can directly drive prices down to zero. As the price goes to zero, long positions explode, and short traders become the most profitable. Therefore, exchanges attempt to use ADL to forcibly balance some short positions and prevent a complete price crash. (In this case, ADL automatically closes short positions even if they are in the money, creating balance for long positions.)
The biggest question is how the ADL transaction price was determined. At this point, it remains unclear what price ADL was operating at during the crash on October 11th. In my opinion, there were some unfair pricing decisions.
Many Companies Incurred Losses!
Gaevoy said that Binance suffered serious losses due to its failure to close long positions on time, and that the exchange should have used its insurance fund first to cover the loss, but ADL stepped in directly.
At this point, Wintermute CEO said that many companies were forced to close their short positions and the situation left the companies in a worse situation.
On this point, Gaevoy said, “Generally, many market-making companies open long positions in the spot market and short positions in the futures market, thus creating a neutral environment. This provides protection against both rises and falls. However, if your short position is closed while the market is falling, you’ll suddenly be left with only a long position in the spot market. This means your losses will only increase when the market is already falling. Many market-making companies experienced this in the last crash and lost a lot of money. As a result, we will see some companies take legal action against Binance in the coming days due to the losses they suffered.”
*This is not investment advice.