저자: TomLee · 외국인
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10/10 스테이블코인 가격 오류가 ADL 자동청산을 촉발해 약 200만 계정이 청산되고 마켓메이커 자본이 훼손되며 유동성이 약화, 이것이 크립토 하락의 원인이라는 주장. 과거 2022년 사례처럼 약 8주 후 조정이 마무리될 것이며 대기 자금과 구조 개선으로 반등이 하락보다 빠를 것으로 전망. 비트코인 125k→88k 하락 후 77k 가능, 이더리움 2500 바닥 가능, 그 이후 반등은 하락보다 빠를 것이라고 봄.
다듬은 글
Why did crypto crash so violently in October and November? And why does Tom Lee believe the recovery will unfold faster than the decline? Over the past few weeks, many investors assume the drop in Bitcoin and Ethereum reflected a shift in market sentiment. According to Tom Lee, the real cause was far more technical and far less permanent.
On October 10th, a pricing error inside one exchange pushed a stable coin far below its $1 mark. That single distortion activated an automatic liquidation mechanism across the platform and the cascading effect spread into other exchanges. Nearly 2 million accounts were liquidated even though many of them were profitable only minutes before.
The damage carried over to market makers who were suddenly forced to reduce risk, shrink their balance sheets, and pull liquidity from the market. This created a slow decline that looked like fear-driven selling, even though it was the result of impaired liquidity and cautious capital positioning. Tom Lee explains that similar events in previous years eventually produce sharp recoveries once the system normalized.
As balance sheets improve and sideline capital re-enters, the rebound usually accelerates more quickly than the initial decline. In this video, we break down Tom Lee's assessment of the October crash, the structural reasons behind the market's weakness, and why he believes the next major move in Bitcoin and Ethereum could form sooner than most investors expect.
egin. You know, I think the crypto market has been limping along since October 10th because on that date was a negative shock. I mean today's stock market looks a lot like an echo of what happened October 10th. But on October 10th that liquidation was so big, Brian, it really crippled market makers.
And now market makers are critical in crypto because they provide liquidity. I mean they act almost as the central bank in crypto. And if they've got a hole in their balance sheet that they need to raise capital for, they need to reflexively reduce their balance sheet, reduce trading. Um, and if prices fall, they've got to then do more selling.
So, I think that this drip that's been taking place for the last few weeks in crypto reflects this market maker crippling. And so, in 2022, it took 8 weeks uh for that to really get flushed out. We're only 6 weeks into it. So, I I I kind of concur. I think crypto, Bitcoin and Ethereum are in some ways a leading indicator for equities because of that unwind and now this sort of limping and and weakened liquidity.
The weakness in the market began on October 10th when a sudden liquidation event struck the crypto ecosystem. Tom Lee explains that this was not caused by fear or a shift in long-term demand. It was a mechanical failure that disrupted the one group responsible for keeping the market orderly. Market makers were hit with losses large enough to force them into defensive positioning.
They provide liquidity and absorb volatility during stressful conditions. So any damage to their balance sheets reduces the systems ability to handle even normal selling pressure. Once they pulled back, spreads widened and depth on the order books thinned out. This led to a slow downward drift even though the broader macro environment did not change in a meaningful way.
The market behaved as if sentiment had collapsed. But the real problem was that liquidity had weakened. Tom Lee compares market makers in crypto to central banks because they create structure inside an otherwise volatile environment. When that structure is damaged, price becomes more reactive. That is why Bitcoin fell from 125,000 to the upper 80,000 range over the following weeks.
It did not collapse from a shift in belief. It drifted because the liquidity needed to stabilize prices was temporarily unavailable. There is an important bullish implication behind this. Historical data shows that when market makers recover after similar events, the rebound often outpaces the decline.
The unwinding phase takes time, but once balance sheets are restored, the buying pressure that was sitting on the sidelines becomes active again. This creates an acceleration on the upside once the ecosystem stabilizes. Next up, we will explore how one pricing error triggered liquidations on an unprecedented scale because that moment set the entire chain reaction into motion.
There's a lot of what they call automated processes in crypto. One of them is called ADL. Okay? And that's an automatic liquidation feature that would take place if someone's account or their collateral drops in price. It's essentially like a margin call. Um, on a specific exchange, a stable coin's price varied from other exchanges.
It actually stable coin should stay at a dollar. It dropped to 65, but that only happened within the exchange quotes within this exchange because of liquidity. That triggered an ADL, an automatic liquidation across many accounts. It wiped out as that spread across other exchanges, right? Because liquidations cascade, almost too many crypto accounts got wiped out.
even though minutes before they were actually profitable accounts. The strain that hit market makers did not appear out of nowhere. It started when a stable coin inside one exchange briefly lost its $1 price and fell to 65. This drop did not occur across the entire market. It was isolated inside that exchange due to thin liquidity.
Yet, the system treated it as a real price. Tom Lee explains that the automated processes built into crypto trading platforms immediately activated once that price deviation appeared. One of these processes is ADL, which stands for automatic deleveraging. It functions like a margin call and forces positions to close when collateral values drop.
The temporary mispricing of the stable coin triggered that mechanism across many accounts. What looked like a minor glitch turned into a cascading liquidation wave. Nearly two million accounts were closed within minutes. Many of those accounts were profitable only moments earlier, but once the ADL system began liquidating positions, the effect moved beyond the original exchange.
Other platforms reacted to the incoming sell pressure and began executing their own forced liquidations. The spread in pricing created a chain reaction where traders who had no exposure to the mispriced stable coin still lost their positions. The event demonstrated how tightly interconnected the crypto trading environment has become.
A single technical failure in one location can spill across the entire ecosystem. Although destructive, the situation provides a useful lesson for developers and exchanges. Stable coin pricing must be sourced more accurately and liquidation systems need safeguards that prevent errors from multiplying.
Improvements of this kind tend to make recovery phases stronger since confidence returns once structural weaknesses are resolved. Tom Lee believes that future rebounds will benefit from these adjustments. Next up, the smaller technical flaw behind this mispricing reveals a much deeper issue about how exchanges calculate price.
five . Uh I think what you should keep in mind is that the this error is actually essentially a bug you know a code error because they I think in retrospect they would have pulled pricing from across exchanges to set the price for that stable coin rather than rely on internal quotes. Um so but this has resulted in a lot of market makers and traders having less capital and as you know as crypto prices drift lower because trading volumes drop they need to then have more capital available which means they shrink their balance sheet further.
So this is then that reflexive okay weakening. Tom Lee clarifies that the collapse did not begin with sentiment fear or fundamentals. It began with a coding decision. The exchange that mispriced the stable coin was relying on its own internal price feed instead of pulling data from multiple exchanges.
When liquidity thinned out inside that local order book, the system treated the distorted price as accurate. The ADL engine then used that incorrect value to determine which positions should be liquidated. Once the first wave of positions closed, more sell pressure entered the market, which reduced liquidity even further.
Each step amplified the next one, creating a self-reinforcing decline. The mistake was not malicious. It was a simple design flaw in how the platform calculated price. In hindsight, Tom Lee believes they would have used data from several liquid markets to confirm stability before triggering liquidations.
By relying on a single internal quote, the system made itself vulnerable. Once traders lost capital and market makers took hits to their balance sheets, the entire structure shifted into survival mode. Volumes fell, liquidity weakened, trading book shrank. Even small declines became difficult for the market to absorb.
The bullish angle appears when the mechanics of this failure are understood. Technical flaws can be rewritten. Infrastructure can be upgraded. Liquidity can be rebuilt. The damage was real, but the underlying demand for Bitcoin and Ethereum did not change. History shows that once impaired market layers recover, price reacts with force.
Each recovery after a structural shock move faster than the earlier decline. That pattern forms when buyers wait with capital while sellers are driven out unwillingly. Next up, Tom Lee connects this structural breakdown to earlier crises and explains why the long-term setup remains intact. You know, in 2009, it was really that the collateral wasn't secure in real estate in these packaged subprime mortgages.
Now the industry learned and they recoded that. I'm talking about Wall Street. But then regulators came in and like overregulated. That's that was the negative effect of that. In crypto, this code of ADL and the way they pull prices never going to happen again. The good news is we're not going to have overregulation in crypto.
But but now we have to deal with that liquidation effect. 2022 was a big liquidation and it took 8 weeks. Um but it it that is kind of you're right it is the nature of DeFi where there is going to be code and there's going to be an error found and you said it leverage is what's dangerous and so investors should not be using excess leverage in crypto.
Tom Lee draws a comparison between this event and earlier breakdowns in traditional finance in 2009. The main issue was that the collateral behind mortgage securities was not secure. Once that weakness was exposed, regulators and institutions rebuilt the system with new rules. Crypto is experiencing a similar growing phase.
The ADL mechanism and the way certain exchanges calculate prices revealed flaws that developers can now fix. This type of error forces updates that strengthen the long-term structure of the market. Tom Lee emphasizes that the positive aspect of this situation is that the industry will not face heavy regulatory blowback.
Developers can patch the code without the long delays and compliance burdens that slowed progress on Wall Street after the financial crisis. Liquidation events also reveal how much leverage exists in the system. Excess leverage intensifies every downturn because it increases the number of accounts vulnerable to forced selling.
Tom Lee advises traders not to rely heavily on borrowed capital. When volatility spikes during a technical failure, leveraged accounts are the first to fall and their losses accelerate the decline for everyone else. The recent cascade shows that deleveraging phases can move quickly when the system is triggered by faulty pricing or thin liquidity.
Even with this disruption, the fundamental long-term setup for Bitcoin and Ethereum has not weakened. The underlying trend of institutional adoption remains intact. Major firms continue to accumulate rather than exit. Developers continue improving stability and transparency across the ecosystem. Each time a structural flaw is uncovered and corrected, the market becomes more durable and less vulnerable to future shocks.
Next up, Tomley explains why the recovery from this decline could be stronger and faster than the sell-off itself once liquidity returns. Whether we're talking to macro funds or to crypto funds, they are sitting on piles of cash. People are sitting on their hands because they know there are these plumbing problems and these crippled market makers.
They're not going to try to be heroes and step in here. So when we look at those prior corrections, even Bitcoin in the last few years, Bitcoin last year had some really ugly corrections. Each of them had the recovery, right? the rise from the low was faster than the than the drip to the bottom. So if if we've been suffering through six weeks of Bitcoin falling from 125 to 88 and maybe it goes to 77, right?
Maybe that's the low and Ethereum bottoms at 2500. The recovery from there to all-time highs will be faster than the decline. That's what happened in every crypto decline because what what you have is all this spooled up energy. People are sitting and waiting and there's panic selling forced sellers but the buyers are being patient.
Um that's what will happen. And again Tom Lee notes that one of the most overlooked dynamics in crypto downturns is the amount of capital that waits on the sidelines during periods of structural stress. large macro funds and cryptonnative funds are currently holding substantial cash reserves. They are not deploying that capital because they understand the plumbing issues created by the October event and they recognize that market makers need time to rebuild their balance sheets.
This cautious stance slows the decline because fewer investors are actively selling with intent. The majority of the downward movement comes from forced liquidations rather than conviction-based exits. Tom Lee highlights that Bitcoin has experienced several deep corrections over the past two years. Each time the price recovered at a pace that exceeded the speed of the decline.
This pattern emerges because forced sellers are removed from the market first while long-term holders and patient buyers maintain their positions. When liquidity stabilizes, the absence of distressed sellers allows demand to dominate quickly. As soon as market makers restore normal function and sideline capital becomes active again, upward pressure builds far more rapidly than most expect.
The current drop from 125,000 to the upper 80,000 range fits that familiar structure. Even if Bitcoin revisits the 77,000 region and Ethereum tests around 2,500, Tomley believes those levels would form a base rather than the start of a larger collapse. The long-term adoption cycle remains strong and major institutional players have not reversed their broader positioning.
Once liquidity returns, the stored energy from weeks of caution often shifts into aggressive accumulation, which accelerates price movement toward new highs.
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