#WCTCS9 Crypto Faces a “Black Weekend”—Who Hit the Sell Button?
Over the weekend, the crypto market was hit by another wave of sharp price declines and deteriorating sentiment.
In just two days, Bitcoin repeatedly lost key levels, falling from $69,000 on Saturday to a low of $62,000 this morning and wiping out nearly all of its gains over the past three months. Fear quickly spread through the market, while selling pressure continued to mount. Successive waves of large-scale liquidations further deepened the decline, badly hurting leveraged traders. Even many seasoned market veterans struggled to withstand this sudden shock.
This sharp pullback has sent a chill through the entire crypto market. Since reaching an all-time high of about $4.37 trillion in October 2025, the global crypto market cap has nearly halved, shedding more than $2.1 trillion.
The crypto market is now facing a severe stress test.
Crypto Market Hit by Rare Sell-Off, with Selling Pressure Mainly from the US
A fresh wave of selling has swept across the crypto market. Although US stocks staged a temporary rebound, it failed to reverse the continued downtrend in crypto assets. CoinGecko data shows that Bitcoin briefly fell below $63,000 early on November 15, hitting a low of $62,000 on OK, down about 28.7% from its September peak of $87,000 and 14.5% over the past week. Well-known trader Flood wrote on November 15 that this was one of the most aggressive and price-insensitive BTC sell-offs he had ever seen. Seeing flows like this makes one wonder whether large sellers have access to certain information, or whether hidden leveraged positions are being forcibly liquidated; he warned that blindly placing buy orders without assessing the situation could easily make one a target. Flood went on to list several possibilities: Did sellers learn about certain geopolitical events in advance, with BTC happening to be the most liquid asset to trade over the weekend? Did they have information about quantum computing? Were they selling ahead of a larger wave of forced sellers? Or was the sell-off itself caused by liquidations? In the last case, Flood believes it could instead signal an opportunity to place bids and absorb selling pressure. He also noted that almost all the selling took place on Coinb, and was concentrated mainly over the weekend. Prices continued to fall, but no strong rebound followed the deep correction, while investor confidence sank to rock bottom. PAData, a crypto market data and cycle indicators platform under PANews, says the Crypto Fear & Greed Index has fallen to 10, with the market stuck in “Extreme Fear” territory for several consecutive days.
David Lawant, head of research at Anchorage Digital, also believes Bitcoin’s selling pressure is still coming mainly from the US. A chart he shared shows that from November 9 to 14 UTC, the cumulative volume delta (CVD) for Coinb’s main BTC spot trading pairs fell to around -8,900 BTC, meaning aggressive sell volume exceeded aggressive buy volume by about 8,900 BTC—the most pronounced selling pressure among the four exchanges shown.
By comparison, over the same period, CVDs for An'an and Byb were around -3,100 BTC and -700 BTC, respectively, while OK was around 1,400 BTC.
Bitcoin’s continued decline has further increased the pressure on Strategy, the world’s largest Bitcoin DAT company, whose holdings are now showing more than $10.7 billion in unrealized losses. Ethereum has fared even worse, with a significantly steeper decline than Bitcoin.
ETH briefly fell below $1,800, down about 22.5% over the past week. Ethereum has fallen to 98th in the global asset market cap rankings, just $1.92 billion away from dropping out of the top 100. BitMine, the world’s largest Ethereum DAT company, is sitting on $9.65 billion in unrealized losses on its holdings, nearly half their total cost.
The sell-off has rapidly shrunk the crypto market’s total capitalization, with losses continuing to mount. CoinGecko data shows that as of November 15, the global crypto market cap had fallen to $2.23 trillion, shedding more than $554 billion over the past 10 days—making this one of the largest sell-offs in history. Only four other periods have seen a greater 10-day decline in market capitalization: May 2021, October and November 2025, and February 2026.
From Macroeconomic Tightening to ETF Outflows, the Crypto Market Faces Multiple Headwinds
Behind this correction, multiple negative factors have hit the crypto market in succession, intensifying selling pressure.
· Fed Rate Hike Expectations Rise, Keeping Macroeconomic Liquidity Under Pressure
Changes in the macroeconomic environment are eroding the appeal of risk assets. US inflation data for October came in above expectations, while a strong labor market quickly fueled expectations that the Fed would continue tightening monetary policy this year. According to CME FedWatch data, as of November 10, the market-implied probability of a 25-basis-point Fed rate hike in December had risen to 88.5%, up sharply from around 76.3% a week earlier.
Meanwhile, the yield on 10-year US Treasuries rose to about 5.16%, and a stronger dollar added further pressure on risk assets. This also diminished the appeal of allocating to highly volatile assets such as crypto. As a risk asset that generates no interest income, Bitcoin carries a relatively higher cost of holding in a high-interest-rate environment and faces a higher opportunity cost. When US Treasuries offer more attractive yields, some capital may shift to fixed-income assets, reducing the willingness to allocate to highly volatile assets.
· Consecutive ETF Net Outflows, Spot Demand Remains Weak!
ETFs have long been a key engine drawing institutional capital into the crypto market, but the tide has now turned, making them a major source of continued outflows in this downturn. According to SoSoValue data, US spot Bitcoin ETFs have recorded net outflows for three consecutive weeks, totaling more than $2.55 billion, with outflows of more than $1.07 billion last week alone. BlackRock’s IBIT was the main source of outflows, with $2.12 billion in net outflows since November, accounting for about 90.2% of total net outflows from US spot Bitcoin ETFs over the same period. Outflows from spot Ethereum ETFs have been even more severe. Since launching in July 2024, they have recently been going through their worst period of outflows, with net outflows for seven consecutive weeks totaling more than $2.41 billion—exceeding Bitcoin ETFs in both the scale and duration of outflows. Net outflows reached $1.61 billion in October alone, a record high, with BlackRock’s ETHA also serving as a major channel for outflows.
Moreover, demand for spot buying in the US market remains weak. CoinGlass data shows that the Coinb Bitcoin premium index has remained negative for 53 consecutive days, most recently at -0.07%, reflecting continued weakness in US buying demand. Notably, the index had turned positive on August 24 for the first time since May 19, reaching 0.0052% and briefly ending a 97-day stretch of negative premiums.
· Nvidia Leadership Shake-Up Hits Tech Stocks, Further Cooling Risk Appetite
On November 12, Nvidia announced that founder Jensen Huang had stepped down as the company’s CEO and a director, ending his 33-year tenure at the helm since founding the company in 1993. CFO Colette Kress took over as interim CEO, while the board launched a search for a new CEO. As a core company in the global AI industry chain, Nvidia’s leadership change quickly attracted market attention. Huang has long led the company’s strategic direction and business development. His departure not only brings new uncertainty to Nvidia’s future operations, but also prompts investors to reassess the growth outlook, valuations, and financing models of the AI industry.
Against a backdrop of mounting pressure on AI tech stocks, the news further heightened market volatility. Meanwhile, Anthropic has filed IPO prospectus documents and plans to proceed with its listing. The listing of large technology companies typically attracts market capital and investor attention. With risk appetite weakening, this could prompt some investors to rebalance their holdings and set aside funds for potential IPO subscriptions.
· US Midterm Elections Change the Balance of Power in Congress, Adding Uncertainty to Crypto Regulation
Changes in the policy landscape have added another layer of uncertainty to the crypto market. Following the US midterm elections, Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, ending the previous arrangement in which Republicans controlled both.
The Trump administration’s relatively supportive stance toward the development of the crypto industry has long provided the market with a degree of policy optimism. But with control of Congress changing hands, Democrats will regain control over the agendas and oversight of key committees, influencing the review and progress of important legislation, including crypto market structure bills. In particular, control of key bodies such as the Senate Banking Committee could change, prompting the market to reassess the direction of future US crypto regulation. It should be noted that the change in the balance of power in the US Congress does not mean that US crypto policy will necessarily shift toward a comprehensive crackdown, but the increased uncertainty around policy progress has already become a factor affecting market sentiment.
· Key Support Levels Fall One After Another, Leveraged Liquidations Deepen the Decline
The market decline has gone beyond spot selling, with mass liquidations of leveraged positions further accelerating the downturn. This was especially true during weekend trading, when relatively thin liquidity makes large sell orders more likely to trigger sharp price swings. After Bitcoin repeatedly broke through key support levels, a large number of highly leveraged long positions were forcibly liquidated. The resulting selling pressure pushed prices down further and triggered more liquidations, creating a chain reaction that accelerated the market decline.
CoinGlass data shows that $2.024 billion in positions were liquidated across the market over the past 24 hours, affecting more than 318,000 traders. Long liquidations totaled $1.753 billion, while short liquidations totaled $271 million, making longs the main casualties of this wave of liquidations.
This downturn is not merely a price retracement, but also a reshuffling of the market’s narrative and capital dynamics. When the crypto market will stabilize and whether it can resume its uptrend remain to be seen. But for the market, the bigger challenge now may be how to regain buying support and investor confidence.$BTC ‌

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#黄仁勋辞职 #每周来晒 Is Jensen Huang’s departure the beginning of the AI bubble bursting?
On November 12, 2026, Nvidia announced that Jensen Huang had resigned as president, CEO, and director, effective immediately. Longtime CFO Colette Kress was appointed interim CEO, while the board simultaneously began searching for a permanent successor.
After the news broke, Nvidia shares plunged nearly 14% at one point during intraday trading, before paring their losses to about 4.3% by the close. The market instantly interpreted the move as a landmark turning point in the AI boom: “The king of AI is stepping down; the bubble is about to burst.”
But looking at the timeline more closely, this seems more like a fuse than the explosion itself.
The immediate trigger for Huang’s departure was issues concerning his personal ethics and an independent investigation by the board, not a sudden collapse in industry demand. The sharp stock decline reflects the market repricing the “founder halo”; it does not mean the fundamentals of the entire AI industry chain have failed.
What truly determines whether the AI bubble will burst has never been any one person’s departure or staying on. It comes down to four key factors: capital expenditure, returns from real-world applications, the competitive landscape, and policy constraints.
For Nvidia, Huang is far more than just a CEO. During his 33 years at the helm, he led three make-or-break transformations: from gaming graphics cards to the general-purpose computing CUDA ecosystem, and then to today’s role as a core supplier of global AI computing infrastructure. He did more than set the product roadmap: he also connected TSMC, cloud providers, model companies, and regulators around the world, using his immense personal influence to take the narrative that “AI needs more computing power” global. The CUDA ecosystem, hardware-software integration, supply chain cadence, and negotiations with major customers all bear the imprint of his decisions.
Investors have been willing to give Nvidia a high valuation partly because they are buying its chips, and partly because they believe in Huang’s ability to keep betting on the right direction. So when he suddenly leaves, the market’s first reaction is: the linchpin that “kept delivering miracles” is gone, and the risk premium must rise.
But there is a key distinction here: the founder halo can disappear, but the barriers already built will not vanish overnight. The CUDA developer ecosystem, servers already delivered, mature foundry chain, and cloud provider orders already secured are network effects built up over many years.
In the short term, the business will continue at its existing pace. Hard metrics like earnings, shipments, and gross margins are what will determine the valuation. The divergence in the market that day also confirms this: Nvidia plunged, while competitors such as AMD and Broadcom actually gained. Investors were selling the “Jensen Huang premium,” not rejecting demand for AI computing power across the board.
In other words, this is a company-level confidence shock, not a systemic collapse across the entire industry.
The so-called AI bubble was already being debated repeatedly long before Huang’s departure.
The current contradiction is clear: global AI capital expenditure has already reached the trillion-dollar level, but commercial returns downstream are lagging far behind the pace of investment. Several institutions estimate that AI infrastructure investment will be enormous in the coming years, while the directly monetizable market for generative AI remains relatively limited. After deploying AI, many companies have not seen an increase in net profits; many pilots remain at the demonstration stage and have not generated stable cash flow.
High market valuations are fundamentally a bet on the future: spending money today to build computing capacity, then realizing returns through AI agents, industry applications, and automation. If this payoff takes longer, or the return on investment continues to deteriorate, the bubble will come under pressure to contract. During Huang’s tenure, his speeches, product upgrades, and orders from major customers continually backed this long-term narrative. Without that backing, the market will shift from “believing the story” to “demanding evidence,” and valuations will be judged more rigorously.
In the post-Huang era, Nvidia will shift from a founder-driven “offensive mode” to an institutionally governed “verification mode.” Kress, the interim leader, comes from a finance background and is familiar with the company’s cash flow, cost controls, and capital allocation. This suggests that future strategy may lean toward prudence: controlling the pace of capital expenditure, improving earnings quality, and balancing growth with risk, rather than continuing to make aggressive bets on high-risk paths.
This is a normal transition for a mature corporation, but for the AI sector it means two things.
First, Nvidia will no longer be the “engine” pushing computing capacity expansion at any cost, and the expansion pace of the entire industry chain may slow;
Second, competitors, domestic computing power providers, and software companies will have a greater window of opportunity. In the past, the market assumed Nvidia’s roadmap was the industry’s roadmap. Now that the roadmap is more uncertain, capital will be reallocated, spreading from the single leading player to alternatives, and shifting from pure hardware speculation toward companies with real-world use cases.
Across A-shares and the global tech supply chain, this change will bring clear structural divergence.
If Huang is leaving for personal reasons alone, with no material deterioration in the company’s operations or orders, then the short-term impact will be mainly emotional: volatility will increase for computing power, optical modules, high-speed interconnects, and other assets that have already risen sharply, but companies with genuine orders and cash flow will not be abandoned all at once. If the successor later changes strategy, cuts expansion, or US export controls tighten further, expectations for demand across the entire computing power chain will be revised downward, and theme stocks whose earlier gains were driven by valuation will be the first to see their bubbles deflate.
Conversely, AI will not simply disappear: embodied intelligence, robotics, industrial automation, and corporate cost-cutting applications will continue to advance. Capital will simply shift from “betting on distant possibilities” to “looking at current returns.”
A bubble bursting does not mean AI is dead. It means valuations return to earth, pushing out speculation unsupported by performance and leaving the parts that truly create value.
There is another easily overlooked risk: geopolitics.
Nvidia’s business is at the center of great-power technological rivalry, and export controls, chip tiers, and supply chain relocation continue to constrain its room to expand. Huang’s personal communication skills once helped buffer the company as it balanced regulators in different countries and maintained customer relationships; a successor will find it difficult to replicate his network and influence. If tighter policies coincide with management turmoil, Nvidia’s deliveries, pricing, and market share will all face greater uncertainty, which will in turn affect the entire global computing power supply chain. This is the risk that deserves more attention than a personnel change.
Of course, the bubble could also “land softly.”
If Nvidia completes the transition smoothly, with no major interruptions to product upgrades, ecosystem support, or deliveries to major customers, while downstream AI applications begin generating real revenue and capital expenditure shifts from blind expansion to growth with returns, then this adjustment will simply mark AI’s transition from a period of frenzy to one of maturity.
Many technological revolutions have gone through similar phases: the internet and mobile internet both saw bubbles burst, but the technologies ultimately transformed industries. AI’s core proposition is to reduce the cost of production, research and development, and services. That underlying demand has not disappeared; it is simply taking longer to deliver than the market expected.
From an investor’s perspective, three layers of signals should be monitored to determine whether this is an emotional pullback or the start of a bubble.
The first layer is Nvidia itself: have its earnings guidance, data center revenue, gross margins, or customer orders materially declined?
The second layer is the industry chain: are cloud providers cutting capital expenditure? Are computing capacity utilization and downstream customers’ willingness to pay for applications improving?
The third layer is governance and competition: what is the new management’s strategic direction, how are US chip controls evolving, and how much traction are alternatives gaining?
Only if all three layers of signals deteriorate simultaneously can we say that the AI bubble has entered an accelerated bursting phase. A founder’s departure alone is not enough to trigger a systemic collapse.
Ultimately, Huang’s departure marks the end of an era, not the end of the technology. His personal charisma and strategic vision accelerated AI’s boom and amplified the market’s optimistic expectations for the sector. With this “anchor” gone, the market will return to the simplest business principles: revenue, profit, and cash flow. A bubble is when prices run ahead of delivery; when the market is no longer willing to pay a hefty premium for long-term stories, the bubble begins to contract. This will not happen in a single day of steep declines, but through a prolonged period of divergence: pure-play theme stocks with no ability to deliver will continue to be flushed out, while infrastructure and application companies that genuinely create efficiencies will find their footing amid volatility.
The AI wave will not come to an abrupt halt just because one person has left, but the market’s party has lost its most influential drummer. The market ahead will no longer be a game of believing in dreams, but a contest of the ability to deliver. $NVDA ‌