Binance’s October 10 Defense at Consensus Hong Kong Falls Flat

Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng has defended the exchange against claims that it was responsible for the October 10, 2025, “10/10” crypto crash, which saw roughly $19 billion in liquidations. Speaking at CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong conference on February 12, 2026, Teng argued the sell-off was driven by other factors besides any Binance-specific failures. Richard Teng Gives Binance’s Side of the Story on October 10 Crash The Binance co-CEO cited macroeconomic and geopolitical shocks between the US and China. Specifically, he cited: Fresh US tariff threats, including potential 100% duties on Chinese imports, and China’s imposition of rare-earth export controls. The combination, he said, flipped global risk sentiment, triggering mass liquidations across all exchanges, centralized and decentralized alike. “The US equity market plunged $1.5 trillion in value that day,” Teng said. “The US equity market alone saw $150 billion of liquidation. The crypto market is much smaller. It was about $19 billion. And the liquidation on crypto happened across all the exchanges.” The majority of liquidations (roughly 75%) occurred around 9:00 p.m. ET, coinciding with the release of macro news. Teng acknowledged minor platform issues during the event, including a stablecoin depegging (USDe) and temporary slowness in asset transfers. Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng said the roughly $19B crypto liquidations on Oct. 10 were driven by US China macro shocks, not Binance.He noted that every major exchange saw liquidations during the event. pic.twitter.com/cdYKaTGfBe— BeInCrypto (@beincrypto) February 12, 2026 However, he stressed these were unrelated to the broader market collapse. He also emphasized that Binance supported affected users, including by compensating some of them. “…trading data showed no evidence of a mass withdrawal from the platform,” he added. Last year, Binance reportedly facilitated $34 trillion in trading volume and served over 300 million users. It is worth noting that the ...