Crypto market capitalization has tanked around 12% over the past 24 hours, falling to around $3.1 trillion at the time of writing.

It is the lowest level markets have seen this year, wiping out more than $400 billion in less than a day as the sell-off accelerated during the Monday morning Asian trading session, sending them back to mid-November levels.

Additionally, more than 700,000 traders were liquidated to the tune of $2.2 billion over the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass liquidation data.

“Damn, I just realized that was the biggest liquidation event in the history of crypto,” commented Reflexivity Research co-founder Will Clemente.

Altcoins Bleed Double Digits

After months at green greed levels, the Bitcoin fear and greed index has fallen back to ‘fear’ at 44 as February hopium evaporates.

BTC crashed around 7.5% from just over $100,000 to hit an intraday low of $91,300 on Monday morning. It recovered to reclaim $93,000 and remains within its range-bound channel at the time of writing. The same cannot be said for altcoins, which have all been obliterated.

Ethereum has been smashed 25% in a plunge below $2,400, its lowest level since October. This pushed the ETH/BTC ratio to a multi-year low of 0.023, according to Tradingview. ETH settled at around $2,500 and is almost 50% down from its all-time high in 2021.

This is insane:

Ethereum just fell -37% in 60 hours since the trade war headlines mid-day on Friday. pic.twitter.com/6UoIIinJqP

Ripple’s XRP also got hammered hard, falling more than 26% in a matter of hours in a plummet to under $2 before a slight recovery.

Solana (SOL) returned to the $180 level after losing 14%, Binance Coin (BNB) lost 16% in a decline to $550, while Dogecoin (DOGE) dumped 24%, crashing back to $0.22.

The pain didnt end there as there were larger losses for Cardano (ADA), which crashed almost 30% in a fall to $0.60; Chainlink (LINK) was crushed by 23%, falling to $17, while Avalanche (AVAX) bled 25% in a fall to $23.

Some of the lower-cap altcoins had wiped out almost a year’s worth of gains in a few hours.

Trump’s War on Trade

Donald Trump’s imposition of trade tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China over the weekend has rattled markets across the globe, with US stock futures deep in the red on Monday morning and Asia bourses getting battered.

“Bitcoin is mainly a risk asset. Tariffs this aggressive are very negative for risk assets. And the economy will take a hit,” commented economist Alex Krüger.

“The hope for crypto is that it has already dropped a lot in anticipation, considerably reducing the downside. Particularly so for altcoins, which have been demolished.”

“Im torn between the entire market putting a major local bottom on Monday or BTC re-testing the bottom of the range ($90k),” he added.

“Trump’s tariff war is impacting the whole market,” Caroline Bowler, chief executive officer of BTC Markets, told Bloomberg. “Concerns about trade wars and stagflation, triggering recessions, are cascading across altcoins and Bitcoin,” she added.