Bitcoin market liquidity has not recovered since a sharp fall in October last year and has weakened further this year.
On April 11, Cointelegraph reported that bitcoin order book depth has fallen about 50 percent from September 2025. It also said derivatives trading and trading in U.S.-listed spot ETFs have slowed.
Bitcoin and the broader crypto market suffered a major shock on Oct. 10, 2025. Leverage positions worth $19 billion were liquidated and some altcoins plunged 40 to 80 percent. The outlet said the current market fragility is driven more by trends seen in 2026 than by the selloff itself.
Bitcoin order book depth refers to the volume of buy and sell orders accumulated within a 1 percent band above and below the price. The figure stood at about $180 million to $260 million in September 2025. On Oct. 10, a temporary liquidity gap emerged as technical problems at Binance coincided with automatic deleveraging at decentralised exchanges.
Bitcoin order book depth then declined before stabilising around $150 million in mid-November 2025. It is now rare for it to exceed $130 million. In February 2026, it fell below $60 million for about 10 days, coinciding with a period when bitcoin struggled to hold the $65,000 level.
The derivatives market has also contracted. Over the past 30 days, crypto derivatives turnover ranged from $40 billion to $130 billion, falling short of the roughly $200 billion level common in September 2025. Bitcoin perpetual futures funding rates, which indicate traders’ risk appetite, showed a similar pattern. They were relatively stable until November 2025 but fell sharply after February 2026.
For U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, daily turnover of more than $4 billion in January to March 2026 fell below $3.3 billion in the first week of April. Average daily turnover in spot ethereum ETFs also dropped to $1 billion from $2 billion in September 2025.
Order book depth, funding rates, derivatives trading and ETF turnover all show that markets were less healthy in April 2026 than six months earlier. Market structure held up relatively well through February 2026, and the weakening became more pronounced after that. The outlet said this suggests the long-term impact of the October 2025 selloff may have been overestimated compared with initial concerns.
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