Global risk assets have experienced a severe sell-off in the past 24 hours, with cryptocurrencies, tech stocks, and the Japanese and South Korean stock markets plummeting collectively. The core trigger points directly to a significant cooling of expectations for Fed interest rate cuts, combined with increasing market concerns over the valuation bubble of tech stocks. Under this dual pressure, high-risk assets have faced a frantic capital exit.

The cryptocurrency market has become a disaster zone. Bitcoin's daily decline exceeded 6%, breaking below the $87,000 mark for the first time since April, with a cumulative drop of over 7% year-to-date, wiping out the annual gain and likely marking the first annual decline since 2022. Ethereum also plunged 5.5% to $2,853, while other coins like Cardano and XRP fell more than 4%. According to Coinglass data, the total liquidation scale of cryptocurrency contracts across the network reached $831 million, with 227,000 investors severely 'harvested', of which over 83% of long positions were liquidated, amounting to $696 million. A single BTC-USDT contract liquidation on the HTX platform reached as high as $30.9176 million, becoming the largest single liquidation case. Technically, Bitcoin has fallen below the 50-day and 200-day moving averages, losing support from trend investors. Options market data indicates that the probability of it dropping below $90,000 by the end of the year has risen to 50%, while the likelihood of breaking $100,000 is only 30%. Sean Dawson, head of research at Derive.xyz, bluntly stated that previous bull market drivers like interest rate cuts have lost effectiveness, highlighting Bitcoin's price vulnerability, which may dip to $75,000 by the end of the year.

The stock market is similarly bleak. Overnight, U.S. tech stocks collapsed across the board, with Sandisk plummeting over 20%, Micron Technology down over 10%, and giants like NVIDIA, Amazon, and Tesla all falling. In today's early trading, the Japanese and South Korean stock markets continued to decline, with the South Korean Composite Index plummeting over 4% at one point, ultimately closing down 3.65%; the Nikkei 225 Index fell 2.26%. The declines in tech-related stocks were particularly pronounced, with SoftBank Group falling 11% at one point, marking its largest drop in recent times, and ultimately closing down nearly 9%. SK Hynix and Advantest dropped over 8%, while Samsung Electronics fell over 4%. The market's anxiety stems from valuation pressures on tech stocks, with the current S&P information index PE at 30.4 times, although lower than the peak during the internet bubble, it is significantly higher than historical averages. Additionally, 8 of the top 10 U.S. companies by market capitalization are AI-related, leading to a concentration far exceeding that of the internet bubble period. Coupled with a surge in capital expenditures from some giants and increasing profit divergence, concerns about valuation bubbles are resurfacing.

The expectation of a shift in Federal Reserve policy is the key driver behind this wave of selling. The U.S. non-farm payroll data for September was unexpectedly strong, with 119,000 new jobs far exceeding the expected 50,000, leading Morgan Stanley to abandon its December rate cut expectations and push the next rate cut to 2026. Internal divisions among Federal Reserve officials have intensified, with Governor Michael Barr warning that inflation remains around 3%, well above the 2% target, urging for a cautious monetary policy; Lisa Cook indicated risks of excessive adjustments in asset prices, suggesting that premature easing would be inappropriate. The market's expected probability for a December rate cut has dropped to 40%, and expectations for tighter liquidity are directly suppressing the performance of non-yielding assets, with large investors having sold over $20 billion in cryptocurrency assets since September.

Despite institutions like Grayscale maintaining a structurally bullish logic for Bitcoin as "digital gold," risk assets still face multiple pressures in the short term. The concentration of 13,800 Bitcoin put options with an exercise price of $85,000 is set to expire, reflecting strong market concerns about downside risks. Meanwhile, the game of valuation bubbles in tech stocks and tightening monetary policy is expected to continue, potentially leading global high-risk assets into a longer adjustment cycle.