Crypto loses $500 billion, but gold and silver wipe out $10 trillion in days

Both precious metals have fallen sharply in recent trading days.

The broader market correction in crypto continues as Bitcoin fell below $75,000 for the first time in almost a year, while ETH was dumped below $2,200.

While this sounds bad, but it is, it’s also worth looking for another perspective that might show that “we’re still early” in crypto.

The crypto disaster

Bitcoin traded above $90,000 a few days ago. The asset challenged that resistance Wednesday before the first FOMC meeting of the year. However, it failed there, perhaps because of the Fed’s decision to suspend interest rate cuts or because of rising tensions in the Middle East.

Since then, the cryptocurrency plummeted to $81,000, recovered slightly to $84,000 on Friday and fell below $76,000 on Saturday. Monday morning started with another nosedive to a new multi-month low of $74,400 (on Bitstamp). This meant that BTC had lost more than $15,000 in less than a week, and almost $10,000 in 36 hours.

Naturally, most altcoins followed suit, with many magnifying bitcoin’s losses. The total crypto market cap is down about $300 billion since Saturday and $500 billion since Wednesday. Over-indebted traders defaulted on more than $2.5 billion this weekend, while another $800 million, mostly from long positions, was liquidated in the past 24 hours.

Gold and silver are falling hard(er)

Bitcoin is often blamed for being too volatile. And that is not entirely untrue, as explained above. However, the current market environment in all financial areas is very atypical. Whether it’s geopolitical uncertainty, the behavior of certain country leaders, or something else, even the oldest safe havens have been behaving irrationally lately.

Gold has been the largest non-real estate asset for decades. Silver has been joined in recent months as it skyrockets to new highs above $120 in a matter of weeks. At the same time, gold touched $5,600 to record another record high. However, something broke in the precious metals market on Friday.

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Silver went from over $121 to $72 on Friday and $70.5 today, while gold fell from $5,600 to $4,400 earlier today. This meant that both assets had wiped $10 trillion off their combined market capitalization in just a few days.

BREAKING: Gold falls below $4,500/oz and silver falls below $72/oz as selling pressure increases.

Gold and silver have now wiped out more than $10 trillion in market cap in three days. pic.twitter.com/H1BiB8Ana5

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) February 2, 2026

From a crypto perspective, it’s clear that the “we’re still early” narrative is true. After all, gold and silver have lost $10 trillion – to a T. That’s more than three times the size of the entire cryptocurrency market. And even with this massive drop, silver alone is larger than the market cap of bitcoin and all altcoins combined.

What about gold, you may ask? Well, the market cap of the yellow metal is more than 10x larger than that of BTC and the alts. So yes, we may still be early.