The market is awash in blood.

On April 1st at 18:32, the ACT/USDT trading pair on Binance suddenly saw a sell order of over 40 million tokens, with the price plummeting from $0.19 to $0.12 within one minute, a drop of over 35%. In the following minutes, it quickly declined, and by the time of writing, ACT quoted $0.07. This 'guillotine' style crash quickly triggered a chain reaction:

Data shows that ACT has about $100 million in concentrated holdings on Binance, with $73 million sold off in just 15 minutes, indicating that the main funds may be offloading at high levels. In contrast, the holdings of this token on other exchanges (like Bybit) are only $8 million, showing that its liquidity is highly concentrated on Binance, exacerbating price volatility.

Exchange policy catalysis: Leverage adjustments become the 'last straw.'

Three hours before the crash, Binance announced it would reduce the maximum leverage on ACT's USDT contract from 50x to 20x and required users to supplement their margin. This adjustment led to two fatal consequences:

  • High leverage long positions forced to close: A sudden reduction in positions triggers a spiral price drop;

  • Grid strategy forcibly terminated: The exit of algorithmic trading robots further drains liquidity.

It is worth noting that among the new tokens launched by Binance during the bull market in 2025, over 90% have fallen more than 90% from their peak.

The lack of review by exchanges on the economic model of project tokens objectively fosters a vicious cycle of 'listing means peak, peak means zero.'

Is it a replay of the May 2022 crash?

This event bears an astonishing resemblance to the market crash in May 2022:

  1. Market makers retreat: At that time, institutions like Jump Trading withdrew from the UST liquidity pool in advance, and this time Wintermute's liquidation is seen as a danger signal;

  2. Leverage domino effect: High leverage institutions like Three Arrows Capital trigger a domino effect due to liquidation; now Binance's margin adjustments and blocking of market makers may repeat the same script;

  3. MEME coin bubble bursts:The previous bull market tokens like SHIB and DOGE eventually fell over 90%, and the current plummeting path of new MEME coins is eerily similar.

However, there are two differences in this round of the market:

Deeper regulatory intervention: Meetings between the SEC and market makers suggest that compliance pressures are escalating;

Liquidity is more fragile: In the latter part of the bull market, funds are concentrated in a few sectors, and the liquidity of altcoins has further deteriorated compared to 2022.

When the carnival ends, who is swimming naked?

The crash of ACT is by no means an isolated event, but rather a concentrated release of systemic risks in the crypto market. When exchanges are indulged in a frenzy of token listings, project parties are intoxicated with market capitalization speculation, regulatory bodies linger in a gray area of compliance, retail investors are doomed to become the victims of a structural dilemma.

As a certain community KOL said: 'Bull markets are cash cows for project parties, bear markets are harvesters for exchanges, and sideways periods are traps set by dog traders.' In this zero-sum game, only by recognizing the essence of the market and sticking to risk bottom lines can we navigate through the cyclical fog.