Key Insights:
- Bitcoin price briefly printed at $0 on Paradex due to a system error, not because of real market selling or a network failure.
- The incident was caused by a faulty database update that pushed wrong price data into the liquidation system, wiping leveraged positions within minutes.
- BTC price stayed stable near $92,600, showing this was a platform-specific failure and not a wider crypto market crash.
Bitcoin price did not crash across the market. BTC traded near $92,600 and moved very little over the past 24 hours. However, on one crypto trading platform, Bitcoin briefly showed a price of zero. This happened on Paradex, a perpetual futures exchange built on Starknet.
For traders using leverage, the damage was real. Positions were closed in minutes. Many users first thought it was only a screen error. It was not. A system failure pushed wrong prices into the trading engine, and the liquidation system acted on it.
What Broke Inside the Paradex System That Sent Bitcoin Price to Zero?
Paradex was doing scheduled maintenance. During this process, the team moved data inside its system. A database change went wrong. Because of this, the platform started reading Bitcoin price incorrectly.
Paradex is a crypto trading platform that lets users trade perpetual futures, also called perps. Perps are contracts where traders bet on price moves using leverage, without owning the coin. Paradex runs on Starknet, which is a faster network built on Ethereum.
Even though Paradex is called decentralized, it still uses off-chain systems to work smoothly. These include databases, pricing systems, and order engines. These parts help trades run fast, but they also mean the platform can fail if internal data breaks.
In this case, a database error fed wrong prices into the system. The liquidation engine acted on those prices right away.
For a short time, Bitcoin price showed as $0 on Paradex. The platform did not pause first. The liquidation engine reacted right away. Long positions were wiped because a price of zero means total loss in leveraged trading.
This was not a hack. No attacker took funds. It was an internal operations failure. The system trusted bad data and acted on it.
Paradex later stopped trading. The team rolled the system back to a point before the error. Open orders were canceled. Trading returned after about eight hours. This limited further damage, but it did not undo all losses.
This Same Pattern Has Appeared Before
What happened on Paradex is not new in crypto. In October 2025, Hyperliquid saw the largest liquidation wave in crypto history. During a fast market drop, more than $10 billion in positions were force-closed on that platform alone. Some traders lost everything in seconds.
The system stayed online, but users paid the price.
During that same crash, dYdX stopped trading for several hours. A system edge case during heavy liquidations forced a halt. When trading resumed, some users were hit by wrong prices. The platform later discussed compensation, but losses had already happened.
Even centralized exchanges have a long record of this. BTC price has crashed to extreme lows before because of system bugs and thin order books. In past years, Bitcoin briefly traded near zero or near $8,000 on a single exchange while the rest of the market stayed normal.
The lesson from all these cases is the same. When price data breaks, leveraged systems react instantly. Traders do not get time to respond.
Bitcoin Price Was Never in Trouble
Despite the shocking headline, Bitcoin itself stayed calm. BTC price held near $92,600 across major exchanges. There was no broad market panic. No chain problem. No network failure. This was a platform-specific issue. Not a Bitcoin issue.
Still, events like this matter. Many crypto trading platforms still rely on off-chain systems like databases, order engines, and price feeds. Even when trading feels decentralized, control often sits with the platform during emergencies.
For traders, the risk is clear. High leverage turns small system mistakes into large losses. Using lower leverage, smaller position sizes, or multiple platforms can reduce damage.
Bitcoin price did nothing unusual, but history shows that these breakdowns keep coming back. So, when they do, leveraged traders feel them first as they keep using borrowed money.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2026/01/20/bitcoin-price-briefly-trades-at-0-on-one-platform-liquidations-follow/
