U.S. stocks, Bitcoin, and silver undergo a bloodbath: a bizarre global asset massacre

Stocks, precious metals, and cryptocurrencies all suffer together—an absolute “liquidity black hole.”

Article by: Uchiha Naruto, Deep Tide TechFlow

February 6th, USD asset investors find it hard to sleep.

Open trading apps, blood-red screens everywhere. Bitcoin once dropped to $60,000, evaporating 16% in 24 hours, down 50% from its previous high.

Silver, like a kite with a broken string, plummeted 17% in a single day. Nasdaq fell 1.5%, tech stocks are in distress.

In the crypto market, 580,000 traders got margin called, $2.6 billion vanished into thin air.

But the most bizarre thing is: no one knows exactly what happened.

No Lehman Brothers collapse, no black swan event, not even any significant bad news. US stocks, silver, and cryptocurrencies—three asset classes—simultaneously dive at the same time.

When “safe-haven assets” (silver), “tech faith” (US stocks), and “gambling casinos” (cryptocurrencies) all crash together, the market message might only be one: liquidity is gone.

US Stocks: Bubble Bursts During Earnings Season

After market close on February 4th, AMD reported a strong earnings report: revenue and profit both exceeded expectations. CEO Su Zifeng said in the conference call: “We are entering 2026 with strong momentum.”

Then, the stock plunged 17%.

Where’s the problem? Q1 revenue guidance was $9.5–$10.1 billion, median $9.8 billion. This exceeded Wall Street consensus expectations ($9.37 billion), so it should have been a cause for celebration.

But the market didn’t buy it.

The most aggressive analysts, those shouting “AI revolution” and setting sky-high target prices for AMD, expected “over $10 billion.” Missing by 2% was seen as a “growth slowdown” signal.

The result was a full-scale sell-off. AMD crashed 17%, wiping out hundreds of billions in market cap overnight; Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell over 6%; Micron Technology dropped over 9%, SanDisk plunged 16%, Western Digital fell 7%.

The entire chip sector was dragged down by AMD alone.

Before that wound could heal, Alphabet delivered another blow.

After market close on February 6th, Google’s parent company released earnings. Revenue and profit again beat expectations, cloud business grew 48%, CEO Pichai was in high spirits: “AI is driving growth across all our businesses.” Then, CFO Anat Ashkenazi threw out a figure: “By 2026, we plan to invest $175–$185 billion in capital expenditures.”

Wall Street was stunned.

This figure is double Alphabet’s 2024 capex of $91.4 billion, and 1.5 times the Wall Street expectation ($119.5 billion). It’s like burning $500 million every day for a whole year.

After hours, Alphabet’s stock plunged 6%, then spasmed back and forth, finally barely holding steady, but panic and worry had already spread through the market.

This is the real AI arms race of 2026: Google burns $180 billion, Meta burns $115–$135 billion, Microsoft and Amazon are also pouring money. The four tech giants will spend over $500 billion this year.

But no one knows where this arms race will end. It’s like two people pushing each other off a cliff—whoever stops first will be pushed off.

The gains of the seven tech giants in 2025 were almost entirely driven by “AI expectations.” Everyone’s betting: although expensive now, AI will make these companies hugely profitable, so buying now isn’t a loss.

But when the market realizes that “AI isn’t a printing press, but a money-burning machine,” sky-high valuations and capex become the sword of Damocles hanging overhead.

AMD is just the beginning. From now on, every less-than-perfect earnings report could trigger a new round of sell-offs.

Silver: From “Gold of the Poor” to Liquidity Sacrifice

Up 68% in a month, then down 50% in three days.

Since January, silver has charted a curve that leaves everyone stunned.

At the start of the month, it hovered around $70, by the end of the month, it surged to $121.

Social media once erupted in “silver frenzy.” Reddit’s silver forum was packed with “Diamond Hands” (steadfast holders), and on Twitter, posts like “Silver is going to the moon,” “Industrial demand exploding,” and “Solar panels can’t do without silver” flooded the feeds.

Many truly believed “this time is different.” Solar demand, AI data centers, electric vehicles—these real industrial needs—plus five years of supply deficits, all pointed to a golden age for silver.

Then, on January 30th, silver dropped 30% in one day.

From $121 straight down to around $78. This was the worst single-day crash for silver since the “Hunt Brothers incident” in 1980. That year, two Texas billionaires tried to corner the silver market, only to be forced to liquidate by exchanges, triggering a market crash.

Forty-five years later, history repeats.

On February 6th, silver fell another 17%. Those who bought at $90 watched their money evaporate again.

Silver is special—it’s both the “poor man’s gold” (a safe haven asset) and an “industrial commodity” (used in solar panels, phones, cars).

In a bull market, this is a double boon: good economy, strong industrial demand; bad economy, safe-haven demand rises. It can go up in any scenario.

But in a bear market, it becomes a double curse.

The crash started on January 30th, when Trump announced the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the new Federal Reserve Chair. Silver plunged 31.4% that day—the biggest single-day drop since 1980.

Warsh is a well-known hawk, advocating high interest rates to control inflation. His nomination cooled fears of “loss of Fed independence,” “monetary chaos,” and “runaway inflation,” which had been the main drivers behind gold and silver’s surge in 2025. On the day of his nomination, the dollar index rose 0.8%, and all safe assets (gold, silver, yen) were sold off simultaneously.

Looking back at this crash, three things happened within 48 hours:

January 30th, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange suddenly announced: silver margin requirements increased from 11% to 15%, gold from 6% to 8%.

At the same time, market makers started pulling back.

Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said: “When volatility gets too high, banks and brokers exit the market to manage their risks, but this retreat actually amplifies price swings, triggering stop-loss orders, margin calls, and forced liquidations.”

Most bizarrely, during the height of silver’s volatility, the London Metal Exchange (LME) suddenly experienced a “technical issue,” delaying opening by an hour.

A series of events on nearly the same day caused silver to fall from $120 to $78, a 35% drop in one day, causing countless margin calls and liquidations.

Coincidence? Or a carefully designed “liquidity trap”? No one knows the answer. But silver’s market was left with a deep scar.

Cryptocurrency: The Delayed Funeral Finally Held

A one-sentence summary of recent crypto crashes: This is a delayed funeral.

In early February, Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, published an article titled “The Depths of Crypto Winter,” with the clear conclusion: the bull market ended as early as January 2025.

In October 2025, BTC hit a new high of $126,000, and everyone cheered “$100K is just the beginning.” Hougan believed this short-lived bull was artificially sustained.

Throughout 2025, Bitcoin ETFs and Digital Asset Finance companies bought a total of 744,000 BTC, worth about $75 billion.

Compare that to the total new Bitcoin mined in 2025—about 160,000 BTC (post-halving). That means institutions bought 4.6 times the new supply.

In Hougan’s view, without this $75 billion in buying, Bitcoin could have fallen 60% mid-2025.

The funeral was delayed by 9 months, but it’s inevitable.

But why did crypto crash the hardest by comparison?

In institutional “asset lists,” there’s an invisible hierarchy:

Core assets: US Treasuries, gold, blue-chip stocks—sold last during crises.

Secondary assets: corporate bonds, large-cap stocks, real estate—sold when liquidity tightens.

Peripheral assets: small-cap stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies—first to be sacrificed.

In a liquidity crisis, cryptocurrencies are always the first to be sacrificed.

This stems from their very nature: best liquidity, 24/7 trading, instantly cashable, with the lightest moral burden and minimal regulation.

So, whenever institutions need cash—whether to meet margin calls, close positions, or if the boss suddenly orders “reduce risk exposure”—the first to be sold are always cryptocurrencies.

When US stocks and gold/silver markets reverse and enter a downtrend, cryptocurrencies are involuntarily sold off as margin-raising fuel.

However, Hougan also believes the crypto winter has lasted long enough; spring is surely near.

The true trigger: Japan’s overlooked ticking time bomb?

Everyone is looking for the culprit: AMD’s earnings? Alphabet’s spending? Trump’s Fed nomination?

The real trigger might have been set in motion as early as January 20th.

That day, Japan’s 40-year government bond yield broke 4% for the first time since issuance, and the first time in over 30 years for any Japanese bond of that duration.

For decades, Japanese government bonds have been the “safety cushion” of the global financial system. Near-zero or negative interest rates, rock-solid.

Global hedge funds, pension funds, insurance companies all play a game called “Yen arbitrage”:

Borrow ultra-low-interest yen in Japan, convert to dollars, buy US Treasuries, tech stocks, or cryptocurrencies, and profit from the interest rate spread.

As long as Japanese bond yields stay stable, this game can go on forever. The market size? No one knows for sure, but conservatively, it’s at least several trillion dollars.

But with the yen entering an interest rate hike cycle, the arbitrage shrank gradually. After January 20th, this game entered hell mode—possibly even liquidation mode.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced early elections, promising tax cuts and increased fiscal spending. But Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is already at 240%, the highest in the world. How can they cut taxes and still pay off debt?

The market exploded—Japanese bonds were dumped en masse, yields soared. The 40-year bond yield jumped 25 basis points in a single day—something unseen in Japan for 30 years.

When Japanese bonds collapsed, a chain reaction began:

Yen appreciated sharply, and funds that borrowed yen to buy US bonds, stocks, or Bitcoin suddenly faced skyrocketing repayment costs. They had to either close positions immediately or face margin calls and liquidation.

US Treasuries, European bonds, all “long-duration assets” were sold off together as investors scrambled for cash.

Stocks, precious metals, cryptocurrencies all suffered together. When even “risk-free assets” are being dumped, other assets are naturally not spared.

This explains why “safe assets” (silver), “tech faith” (US stocks), and “gambling casinos” (cryptocurrencies) all plunged simultaneously.

A pure “liquidity black hole.”