Crypto’s “Black Friday” Crash: A Simple Guide to What Really Happened

You might have heard the news on October 11, 2025: crypto markets went into a total meltdown. Prices for Bitcoin and other coins plummeted, and over a million people had their accounts wiped out in a matter of hours. It was dubbed crypto’s “Black Friday.”

But this wasn’t just a random price drop. It was a massive, fragile system breaking all at once. Think of it like a tower of Jenga blocks, where someone pulled the wrong piece at the bottom. This post will break down, in simple terms, why that tower fell and why the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, was at the very center of the earthquake.

I. Executive Summary

On June 18, 2025, Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, became the target of a significant cyberattack claimed by “Gonjeshke Darande,” also known as “Predatory Sparrow,” a hacking group widely associated with Israel. The incident resulted in a reported loss exceeding $48 million in Tether (USDT) from Nobitex’s hot wallets. Following the breach, Gonjeshke Darande issued a public warning, threatening to release Nobitex’s source code and internal network information within 24 hours, cautioning that any remaining assets on the platform would be at risk.