The crypto market has just experienced one of the most violent shocks of the year, illustrating once again the fragility of positions highly linked to leverage in the face of macroeconomic uncertainties and technological disruptions. In just a few hours, more than $100 billion of the world's stock market capitalization disappeared. This massive purge comes against a backdrop of global technological collapse and regulatory tightening and has plunged the Crypto Market Fear & Greed index into a zone of “extreme fear”with a score of 23.
In brief
- The crypto market has suffered a brutal correction, with more than $100 billion wiped out in a few hours and a marked return of fear across the entire sector.
- A wave of liquidations of more than $720 million hit leveraged traders, leading to the capitulation of thousands of investors and a widespread fall in major digital assets.
- Bitcoin, Ethereum and major altcoins saw sharp declines, while crypto spot ETFs suffered large outflows, adding to selling pressure.
- New US initiatives in favor of quantum computing are rekindling concerns around the future “Q-Day”, a scenario in which quantum computers could call into question the security of current cryptographic systems.
The capitulation of crypto assets
The first act of this crisis is characterized by liquidation metrics of a magnitude rarely seen in recent months, which explains the crypto market's shift into extreme fear. According to market data, more than $720 million in positions were wiped out in 24 hours across all major assets: bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Dogecoin… Nearly 145,000 traders were victims of this wave of forced sales.
The losses mainly affected buyers using leverage: $610 million in long positions liquidated, compared to $110 million for short positions. As proof of the violence of the bearish wick, $182 million of long positions were wiped off the map in a single hour. The Hyperliquid platform also recorded the largest individual liquidation on the ETHUSD contract, for a value of $15.34 million. On the network, on-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr. summary the situation: “the weak hands capitulate while the strong hands do not even blink”.
Here is the factual distribution of losses recorded on the Spot market:
- Bitcoin (BTC): The price fell sharply to an intraday low of $61,893, denting its critical 200-week moving average (200-WMA) at $62,000, generating $216 million in liquidations alone;
- Ethereum (ETH): the second largest crypto on the market plunged below $1,650 to bottom at $1,639;
- Major altcoins: XRP fell by more than 3% to $1.10, while other assets such as BNB, Solana, Cardano or Dogecoin recorded corrections of between 3 and 7%;
- Institutional flows: Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs saw significant net outflows, with BlackRock's IBIT ETF alone recording $170 million in redemptions.
Faced with this massive unwinding of positions, analyst Ted Pillows warned of the need to preserve the technical support zone located between $61,000 and $62,000, predicting that a “cluster drop around $61,200 level” could occur before we can hope for the slightest rebound.
Macroeconomic contagion and global monetary tightening
Beyond the technical crisis, this collapse finds its root causes in a combination of macroeconomic factors and major political decisions. Classic financial markets have spread strong contagion. Korea's KOSPI index suffered a historic collapse of nearly 10%, its third biggest decline in history, while the Nasdaq 100 lost 2.60% in pre-opening.
This overall risk aversion was driven by the rise in the 10-year US Treasury yield to 4.5% and the strength of the Dollar Index (DXY), which hit 101.17, its highest level since May last year. Investors, worried about peace talks between the United States and Iran and fearful of future rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, are eagerly awaiting PCE inflation figures. The diagnosis for the Bit Official analysis entity is clear: “the weakness in both markets can therefore be explained by the fact that the Fed has been less accommodative since October 2025, with the AI narrative only offering a practical explanation for the correction”.
The specter of “Q-Day” and the threat of quantum computing
A fundamental event shook long-term investor confidence: US President Donald Trump's signing of executive orders aimed at massively boosting quantum computing to ensure national security. The White House has officially announced its intention to “relaunch a national innovation effort in quantum technologies, in order to preserve national security and stimulate American growth in an essential industrial sector”. This direction places the crypto industry facing a momentous countdown: 2030, the date on which the US government has mandated that it migrate its own critical systems to post-quantum standards.
Experts fear the advent of a “Q-Day” by 2030, the apocalyptic scenario where quantum computers would manage to break current standard encryptions. This fear is all the stronger as Google has issued an important warning, emphasizing that large-scale quantum machines would be able to break standard cryptography by 2029. Thus, some networks like Solana or
This triple constraint, monetary on the one hand, technological and political on the other, presents complex perspectives and invites a nuanced analysis. In the short term, the market's ability to digest selloffs will depend a lot on the week's U.S. economic indicators, which will guide Fed policy. Ultimately, the blockchain industry is forced to accelerate its transition to a post-quantum architecture in order to preserve its promise of inviolability. This crash, if it temporarily eliminates excess speculation and the leverage of “weak hands”forces developers and institutions to look beyond price curves to respond to an inevitable industrial and security challenge.
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