Crypto Market Cap Dips $230B as Fear Index Reaches April Lows

This week, the crypto market’s Fear & Greed Index made a significant shift to “fear,” dropping to levels not seen since April, following a sell-off that wiped out over $230 billion in a single day.

On Friday, CoinMarketCap’s Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which evaluates volatility, market momentum, social media trends, and dominance metrics, fell to a low of 28, indicating “fear” and approaching “extreme fear.”

According to CoinMarketCap data showed that on Friday, the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization decreased to about $3.54 trillion, a 6% drop from the previous day’s $3.78 trillion. This resulted in a loss of over $230 billion in sector value, marking one of the steepest single-day declines in recent months.

The Fear & Greed Index for traditional assets also fell to 22, indicating extreme fear as US stocks closed lower on Thursday amid turmoil in the credit market, regional banks’ risk from bad loans, and US-China trade tensions that sparked jitters on Wall Street.

Top crypto assets continue to bleed

Data shows that leading crypto assets extended their declines over the last 24 hours as the market correction intensified.

Bitcoin (BTC) dropped nearly 6% to around $105,000, while Ether (ETH) decreased almost 8% to approximately $3,700. Among large-cap altcoins, BNB (BNB) led the losses with nearly a 12% decline, followed by Chainlink (LINK) with an 11% drop and Cardano (ADA) with a 9% decrease.

Solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) also saw declines exceeding 7%, continuing a week-long trend that erased earlier double-digit gains.

On average, the largest non-stablecoin crypto assets fell by about 8%–9% over the last day.

While last week’s market crash caused nearly $20 billion in liquidations, this week’s downturn experienced significantly lower activity.

On Friday, data from CoinGlass showed that approximately $556 million in leveraged positions were liquidated across exchanges, a minor fraction of last week’s total.

From this amount, about $451 million was from long positions, while $105 million resulted from short liquidations.

Related: Gold market cap soars to $30T, dwarfing Bitcoin and tech giants

NFTs, Memecoins and ETFs react to market sell-off

In addition to major cryptocurrencies, other assets such as memecoins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were also impacted by the recent market crash.

Memecoins, which showed slight recovery earlier this week, plummeted 33% in 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. Top memecoin assets reported declines between 9% and 11% over the last day, while trading volumes remained relatively high at nearly $10 billion.

The NFT sector, having rebounded from a $1.2 billion loss last week, erased its gains and fell below a $5 billion valuation, a level last reached in July. CoinGecko data showed that most blue-chip collections experienced double-digit percentage drops in the last 24 hours.

Meanwhile, spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs also reacted to the decline. On Thursday, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded outflows exceeding $536 million, while spot Ether ETFs showed daily net outflows of over $56 million.