Tomorrow will be May 19th again, and seasoned investors should still remember that black swan day. I was on the scene at the time, and that feeling was truly unforgettable—the crypto market’s May 19th event shattered many people’s dreams of overnight wealth. The rollercoaster of big gains and big losses was exhilarating, and even now, I still feel a bit nostalgic.

Speaking of which, the trigger for that crash was actually quite clear. Elon Musk had been promoting cryptocurrencies on Twitter, Tesla invested 1.5 billion USD in Bitcoin, announced acceptance of Bitcoin payments, and even frequently endorsed small coins like Dogecoin. Then, suddenly on May 12th, he did a 180-degree turn, saying Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin because mining consumes too much energy and harms the environment. This immediately shocked the market, causing Bitcoin to plummet from $57,000 to $46,000. By May 16th, he hinted on Twitter that Tesla might sell its Bitcoin holdings, which further ignited panic.

But Musk’s comments were only surface-level. The deeper root of the May 19th event was actually more profound. During that period, China’s regulatory signals were also very strong. On May 18th, the three major associations jointly issued a notice banning virtual currency trading, and Inner Mongolia also started cracking down on mining. Although these policies weren’t new regulations per se, the market interpreted them as signals of suppression, and investors began to panic.

More critically, the crypto market experienced a wild bull run in the first four months of 2021, with the bubble growing extremely large. Bitcoin surged from $30,000 at the start of the year to $64,000 in April, an increase of over 100%. Even smaller emerging coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu went from a few cents to several dollars, soaring thousands of times, mainly driven by social media hype. How long could this bubble last? Once negative signals appeared, a crash was inevitable.

On May 19th, the May 19th crypto event truly exploded. Starting from early morning, the market entered a free fall. Bitcoin dropped from $43,000 to $30,000, a 30% decline. Ethereum fell from $3,300 to $1,900, a 42% drop. Other coins fared even worse, with declines over 30%, some even halving. Exchanges experienced outages and lag, and investors had no time to close their positions, only watching their assets shrink. At that time, the market’s fear index soared to 0.8, hitting a new high in 2021, while the greed index fell to 10—an extreme level of panic.

By the afternoon of May 19th, signs of rebound appeared. Some institutions started to buy the dip, with Bitcoin climbing back to $40,000 and Ethereum returning to $2,800. The decline began to recover. This rebound lasted several days, and market sentiment gradually stabilized.

Looking back at the May 19th event now, the deepest impression is how emotional this market is. During a bull market, greed becomes blind; during a bear market, fear turns into stupidity. A single negative signal can trigger a chain reaction. Back then, Wall Street hadn’t yet deeply entered the crypto market, so the volatility was especially intense. Now, with Bitcoin heavily controlled by Wall Street, it’s unlikely to see such wild surges and crashes again. The market has matured, but that thrill is gone.