Crypto sheds $900B as Trump's 'worst day' warning rattles markets

The bloodletting keeps going. Crypto's total market cap has slid back to where it sat in mid-September, capping five consecutive weekly losses and vaporizing close to $900 billion in value. It's a rout that has bullish traders badly offside — and the damage may not be done.

Coinglass data shows a single day in which nearly $1 billion in positions were liquidated, the biggest one-day wipeout since a $2 billion short squeeze in mid-August. This time the pain tilted hard the other way: roughly 80% of those liquidations came from longs, meaning optimistic traders got steamrolled as prices sank.

The carnage wasn't confined to crypto. The Nasdaq 100 logged its largest one-day drop since the pandemic, and the S&P 500 shed $3 trillion in value — a stunning reversal just 24 hours after the Dow ripped 1,600 points higher on a Democratic midterm sweep. President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to call it one of the stock market's "worst days in history."

Bitcoin is now down almost 30% from its $126,000 peak, even as the regulatory backdrop improved through the GENIUS Act, growing tokenization and stablecoins pushing deeper into traditional finance. The post-election buzz that once fueled crypto's rally has clearly fizzled.

Adding fuel to the fire: reports that Trump Media offloaded $343 million worth of Bitcoin, stoking fears about institutional selling and thickening the FUD around Trump himself. ETF outflows keep bleeding too, leaving crypto with headwinds of its own making rather than just spillover from broader market nerves.

With prices back at mid-September levels and sentiment souring, the setup points to a possible deeper capitulation phase. What started as a post-election sentiment flip now looks like something more structural — and traders are watching to see who blinks first.