Morning Minute: Crypto Rebounds as 'Black Monday' Looms
The original “Black Monday” occurred 39 years ago today. Is history about to repeat itself?
Thirty-nine years ago today, the Dow fell 22.6% in a single session. Nobody saw it coming, and the notorious “Black Monday” turned into trading history.
Crypto enters that anniversary bruised but not broken. Bitcoin sits at $82,161, down just 1.4% on the week and actually up about 1% over the last 30 days. That’s the good news and it’s nearly the only good news.
Everything else got hit harder. Ethereum fell 5.3% to $2,415. BNB dropped 3.3%, Solana 6.2%, XRP 7.2%, Dogecoin 9.4%, Hyperliquid 8.6%, Zcash 13.2%. Across the majors, the average decline outside Bitcoin was 7.5%, roughly five times what BTC gave up.
Further out it gets ugly. Starknet lost 45% on the week, LayerZero 24%, Pump.fun 22%, Ethena 20%, Fetch 20%, Midnight 19%, Canton 18%, Jupiter 18%, Filecoin 17%, Raydium 18%. The top twelve weekly losers averaged losses of more than 20%. And all of this happened in just seven days.
The ETFs bled out as well. Spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $228.4 million across the week, Ethereum ETFs $320.1 million, for a combined $548.5 million. For October, the two complexes have now bled $1.86 billion. Ethereum’s situation is the more fragile one: $14.5 billion in net assets against $12.9 billion of cumulative inflows leaves barely $1.6 billion of cushion before the entire product line is underwater on a mark-to-market basis.
But for context, what turned a bad Friday into Black Monday back then was automated selling feeding automated selling, with no circuit breakers to interrupt it. Equities have those now, and Korea’s Kospi actually tripped one last week. Crypto has none. It trades through the weekend, through the open, through everything, and we already watched what that looks like on October 10, 2025 when the liquidation cascade repriced the whole market in hours.
The setup today is the opposite of a cascade. Slow bleed, orderly exits, Bitcoin holding while the tail gets cut off, and over the weekend, a modest bid returning across the board. And there is broad concern for a “Black Monday” occurring today. Which very likely in itself means it won’t happen. Crashes don’t occur when everyone is expecting them and ready with cash on the sidelines.
The bears may want a Black Monday, but they are very unlikely to get it. At least today…
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