So I was looking back at what happened during that crypto crash below 76K, and honestly it's a textbook example of why leverage unwinding is so dangerous. Bitcoin dropped hard that day, and it triggered this cascade of forced liquidations that just kept feeding on itself. The reason crypto was crashing came down to a few things stacking up at once - it wasn't just one bad headline, it was selling pressure mixed with people getting nervous about risk across all markets. Over 237 million in BTC longs got wiped out in a single day, and that's just the start. When you look at the weekly numbers, liquidations hit 2.16 billion, and over a month they totaled 4.4 billion. That's a lot of leverage leaving the system. What made it worse was that open interest in perpetual futures dropped 4.4% overnight, clearing out about 26 billion in exposure. Altcoins got hit even harder because traders were cutting risk everywhere, not just in Bitcoin. The market was already stressed for weeks before that crash - it wasn't sudden. Some whale supposedly had almost 900 million in unrealized losses on Bitcoin holdings, and that spooked people even more in an already fragile market. Stocks were down in Europe too, so there was this broader risk-off mood happening everywhere. The key thing to watch was whether Bitcoin could hold above 75K. If it broke below that, the next target was 70K. For the broader market to recover, you needed Bitcoin to stabilize and liquidations to slow down. Until that happened, volatility stayed elevated and any bounces struggled to stick. Looking at it now with the latest data, things have stabilized - Bitcoin's back up and altcoins are recovering too. But that crash was a solid reminder of how quickly things can unwind when leverage is high and sentiment shifts. That's why understanding these cycles is important for anyone trading crypto.