We Are Still Early: One Brutal Wall Street Session Erased More Than the Entire Crypto Market

Just a day after the post-election relief rally, Wall Street suffered one of its most violent sessions in years, with S&P 500 companies wiping out roughly $3 trillion in market value as the Nasdaq posted its steepest daily drop since the pandemic era.

The scale of the destruction also produced a rather intriguing comparison: more value disappeared from US stocks in one session than the entire cryptocurrency market is currently worth.

Wall Street Calamity

According to the Kobeissi Letter, the S&P 500 alone lost about $3 trillion in market capitalization during Thursday’s session, roughly $750 billion per hour from the opening bell. Dow Jones Market Data independently put the loss at around $2.9 trillion, the largest single-day wipeout on record for the index’s constituents. Nasdaq companies lost another $2.5 trillion, while the Magnificent Seven shed just over $1 trillion.

The scale of the selling was particularly relentless, as analysts from the KL pointed out that the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq staged at least five intraday rebound attempts, including a single rally of 1.7%, but every one was sold. The leading index failed to print a single positive one-hour candle during the entire session.

The Nasdaq 100 ultimately dumped by around 6.4%, while after-hours futures pushed the 12-hour decline to 7.1%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was subsequently about $5 trillion below its October peak.

Kobeissi argued that the collapse appeared more technical than fundamental. Concerns about AI profitability, capital expenditure, and potentially tighter regulation had already spooked investors, while record leverage amplified the move once sentiment turned. US leveraged ETFs attracted roughly $15 billion in October, which was the largest rolling-month inflow in at least two years.

Still Early

Here’s the interesting perspective for the crypto market, which also tumbled hard for its size. CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap put the entire crypto market cap at somewhere between $2.55 trillion and $2.65 trillion. As expected, Bitcoin holds the lion’s share, around 60% of either amount.

In other words, the $2.9-$3 trillion erased from the S&P 500 companies in a single session exceeded the market value of every BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, stablecoin, altcoin, meme coin, Trump coin, and all other coins combined.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean every crypto asset is undervalued, but it shows the digital asset market is still a fraction of its bigger brothers, despite major adoption news over the past few years.