Taiwan stocks crash—2953 points hits a record worst in history! An AI deleveraging tsunami sweeps across the globe; Bitcoin is actually relatively resilient

Taiwan stocks plunged on the 17th by 2,953.71 points, closing at 42,671.27 points, rewriting the record for the largest single-day closing drop in history. TSMC also crashed in sync, dropping 180 yuan to close at 2,290 yuan, marking the largest single-day decline for an individual stock in its history.

(Background: Taiwan index futures night session collapse—down 3,006 points, the worst in history: plunging 2,000 points in just two minutes; Monday’s “four margin calls at once” got wiped out, etc.)

(Background note: Can Bitcoin hold the $50k mark? Nasdaq futures are down nearly 5%; the market is watching the U.S. stock market open tonight.)

Table of Contents

Toggle

• TSMC earnings call: earnings set a record high, but the stock price crashes
• The aftershock of South Korea’s leverage break
• Bitcoin unexpectedly holds up relatively well
• Safe haven, or the next domino?

Today (17th), Taiwan stocks closed down 2,953.71 points, or 6.47%, at 42,671.27 points. It rewrote the record for the biggest single-day closing-point drop in history, and trading value surged to NT$1.212957 trillion.

Based on Taiwan stock closing data, this black K bar ranked far ahead of the No. 2 and No. 3 biggest selloff points in history (2,065 points on April 7, 2025, when trade-war panic was triggered by Trump’s tariffs; and 1,807 points on August 5, 2024), while about 1,500 stocks across the market closed lower.

The leading protagonist, TSMC (2330), was hit in the final stretch by heavy pressure from nearly 10,000 mysterious sell orders, plunging 180 yuan to close at 2,290 yuan, down 7.29%, and also recording the biggest single-day decline for any individual stock in its history.

Other stocks: MediaTek (2454) fell 8.92% to close at 3,370 yuan; Delta Electronics fell 8.66% to close at 1,740 yuan; United Microelectronics and Nanya Technology both hit the daily limit-down to close at 144 yuan and 395.5 yuan respectively. Winbond, 羣興 (Nan Ya?) (欣興), Macronix, and other memory and PCB stocks all locked limit-downs in sync. The OTC over-the-counter index also tumbled 28.57 points (7.02%) to close at 378.44 points.

TSMC earnings call: earnings set a record high, but the stock price crashes

The ironic part is that TSMC had just finished its earnings call the day before (7/16). In the second quarter, combined revenue of 1.27 trillion yuan and EPS of 27.25 yuan both hit record highs, and Chairman Wei Zhe-jia even said directly that AI demand would stay strong through 2030.

But the company simultaneously raised 2026 capital expenditures to $60 billion to $64 billion, and with third-quarter guidance for gross margin and operating margin slightly lower than the second quarter, the market interpreted it as a signal: “Is AI capex excessive?” The good news from the earnings call turned into a trigger that fueled the selloff afterward.

The aftershock of South Korea’s leverage break

Xie Jinhe, chairman of the Financial Trust Media, pointed out that TSMC’s conservative tone in its earnings call was only one of the fuse factors; the deeper root cause is “the aftershock of South Korea’s leverage break” spreading outward into global markets.

South Korea’s KOSPI index plunged 8.95% on July 13, triggering the 7th circuit breaker event in 2026. Memory giant SK hynix then collapsed 15.37% in a single day, setting the worst record in the company’s history, as its market value evaporated by nearly $200 billion in one go.

Although Korean stocks were off today, the shockwave from deleveraging continued to spill over. On Thursday, all four major U.S. indices also closed lower together; the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 4.29%. As the AI boom cooled and chip stocks weakened across the board, tensions between the United States and Iran also intensified, dragging Asian markets down as well: Japan’s Nikkei index once plunged more than 4,100 points intraday, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index also fell more than 2%.

Bitcoin unexpectedly holds up relatively well

While TSMC recorded the biggest single-day closing-point drop in history and SK hynix’s market value evaporated by nearly $200 billion, Bitcoin’s performance was instead relatively sturdy. Facing U.S. stocks that routinely plunge by teens percent, Bitcoin’s volatility looks comparatively mild. As of the time of this release, BTC is around $63k; over the past 24 hours, it has fallen only about 2.1%, with volatility smaller than that of chip stocks that are collapsing over the same period.

The data since July is even clearer: the SOXX ETF tracking semiconductor stocks is down 17.6%; meanwhile BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF IBIT is up 9.5%. Bitcoin has, in a rare move, run a decoupling rally away from semiconductor stocks.

Safe haven, or the next domino?

This record-breaking Taiwan market black K at its core is a snapshot of the market simultaneously questioning the “AI capital expenditure narrative” and “global leverage conditions.” First South Korea’s leverage ETFs broke, then memory stocks collapsed—setting off the valuation adjustment after TSMC’s earnings call, which then spread into a domino effect across all of Asia.

For crypto investors, what to keep watching going forward is whether, when the AI bubble starts to deflate, Bitcoin is a safe haven as money withdraws—or whether it is the next domino to fall while everyone queues to be knocked down.