At 3 AM, Wall Street traders had just finished their pre-market meeting, but alarms in the crypto world had already echoed globally — the news of the downgrade of the US credit rating combined with the 'one-two punch' of US-China tariff battles caused ETH to complete a 'free fall' from $2570 to $2449 in just 60 minutes. This textbook-level crash ripped open the most bloody wounds of the crypto market.
As an old player who experienced the 'never seen before' market in March 2020, I am particularly clear-headed at this moment: when the market faces the triple strike of 'macro narrative + technical breakdown + leverage liquidation', any technical analysis becomes ineffective. Just like my friend Lao Wang, who just heavily invested in ETH long positions at $2600 last week, now looks at the liquidation message with a bitter smile: 'This drop didn't even have a buffer, it went straight from the ICU to the morgue.'
Every link in this massacre is worth pondering: at 2 AM, the news of S&P downgrading US debt ratings was like throwing a spark into a barrel of gasoline; at 3 AM, Ethereum lost the key level of 2600, triggering programmed trading sell-offs; at 4 AM, the sudden API disconnection from Binance completely ignited the fuse of panic. Ironically, just the night before the crash, a certain KOL was still shouting in the live broadcast, 'Ethereum will break through $3000.'
This reminds me of the 'Binance pin incident' in May 2021 — when market consensus becomes a cage, liquidity traps will devour everyone. The difference this time is that the 'sword of Damocles' of macroeconomics is spreading from traditional finance to the crypto market. As my institutional client Mike said: 'Now even the news of Grayscale's increased holdings can't save the market; this is the real collapse of confidence.'
Standing at this historic turning point, we must consider: when the crypto market takes 'black swans' as commonplace, are those perpetual leverage games that run 24 hours a day heading towards self-destruction? At this moment, ETH's 24-hour liquidation volume has reached $1.8 billion, but the real crisis may lie in places invisible in the liquidation data — those 'all-in players' who are bottom-fishing with mortgaged properties and increasing their loans are turning the crypto market into a risk transmitter for the real world. When digital gold begins to be tainted by the copper smell of fiat money, how many true believers will be left in this game?