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February 6th, U.S. dollar asset investors found it hard to sleep.

Opening trading apps, the screen was filled with red. Bitcoin once dropped to $60,000, evaporating 16% in 24 hours, down 50% from its previous high.

Silver was like a kite with a broken string, plunging 17% in a single day. The Nasdaq fell 1.5%, tech stocks were hit hard across the board.

In the crypto market, 580,000 traders were liquidated, $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. U.S. stocks, silver, and cryptocurrencies—three asset classes—simultaneously plunged.

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

U.S. stocks: bubbles burst during earnings season

After market close on February 4th, AMD reported a strong earnings beat: 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 was the problem? Q1 revenue guidance was $9.5 to $10.1 billion, with a median of $9.8 billion. This exceeded Wall Street consensus ($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, were expecting “$10 billion+.” Missing by 2% was seen as a sign of “growth slowdown.”

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

The entire chip sector was dragged down by AMD alone.

Before AMD’s wounds even healed, 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%, and CEO Pichai was riding high: “AI is driving growth across all our businesses.” Then CFO Anat Ashkenazi threw out a figure: “By 2026, we plan to invest $175 to $185 billion in capital expenditures.”

Wall Street was stunned.

This number is double Alphabet’s 2022 capex ($91.4 billion) and 1.5 times the Wall Street estimate ($119.5 billion). It’s like burning $500 million a day, continuously for a year.

After hours, Alphabet’s stock plummeted 6%, then spasmed back and forth, finally ending roughly flat, but panic and concern were already spreading through the market.

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

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 it’s expensive now, AI will make these companies immensely profitable, so buying now isn’t a loss.

But once the market realizes “AI is not a printing press but a money-burning machine,” these sky-high valuations and capex become a Damocles sword hanging overhead.

AMD is just the beginning. Every less-than-perfect earnings report could trigger a new round of sell-offs.

Silver: From “Poor Man’s Gold” to Liquidity Sacrifice

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

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

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

Social media erupted in “silver frenzy.” Reddit’s silver forum was packed with “Diamond Hands” (holders steadfastly holding), and on Twitter, posts about “silver soaring,” “industrial demand explosion,” and “solar panels cannot do without silver” flooded the feeds.

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

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

From $121 straight down to around $78. This was the worst single-day crash since the Hunt brothers’ incident in 1980. Back then, 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 unique: it’s both “poor man’s gold” (a safe-haven asset) and an “industrial essential” (used in solar panels, phones, cars).

In a bull market, this is a double boon: good economy boosts industrial demand; bad economy increases safe-haven demand. Either way, it rises.

But in a bear market, it’s a double curse.

The crash traces back to 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 “Fed losing independence,” “monetary chaos,” and “runaway inflation,” which had been the main drivers behind gold and silver’s surge in 2025. On that day, the dollar index rose 0.8%, and all safe assets (gold, silver, yen) were sold off simultaneously.

Looking back at this crash, three events unfolded 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 began to withdraw.

Ole Hansen, head of commodities strategy at Saxo Bank, explained: “When volatility gets too high, banks and brokers exit the market to manage their risks. 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 “technical issues,” delaying opening by an hour.

A series of events—silver dropping from $120 to $78, a 35% plunge in one day, countless traders wiped out—happened almost simultaneously.

Coincidence? Or a carefully designed “liquidity trap”? No one knows. But silver markets have since borne a deep scar.

Cryptocurrency: The postponed funeral finally held

A one-sentence summary of recent crypto crashes: it’s a delayed funeral.

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

In October 2025, Bitcoin hit a record 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 new Bitcoin supply 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 nine months, but it’s inevitable.

But why did crypto crash the hardest?

In institutional “asset hierarchies,” there’s a hidden ranking:

Core assets: U.S. 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 caps, commodities, cryptocurrencies—first to be sacrificed.

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

This stems from their very nature: highest liquidity, traded 24/7, easily cashable, with the lightest moral burden and minimal regulation.

So, whenever institutions need cash—whether to meet margin calls, close positions, or an executive’s sudden risk reduction—they sell crypto first.

When stocks, gold, and silver turn downward, crypto is also involuntarily sold to cover margin calls.

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 root may have been planted as early as January 20th.

That day, Japan’s 40-year government bond yield broke 4%—the first time since its issuance in 2007, and the first time in over 30 years for any Japanese bond.

For decades, Japanese government bonds have been the global financial system’s “safety cushion”: near-zero or negative yields, rock-solid.

Global hedge funds, pension funds, insurance companies all engaged in a game called “yen carry trade”: borrowing ultra-low-yielding yen, converting to dollars, and buying U.S. Treasuries, tech stocks, or crypto, earning the interest rate differential.

As long as Japanese yields stayed low, this game could go on forever. The market size? Nobody knows for sure, but estimates run into trillions of dollars.

When Japan’s interest rates started rising, carry trade volumes shrank. But after January 20th, this arbitrage game turned into a nightmare—liquidation mode.

Japanese Prime Minister Suga Sanae 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—an unprecedented volatility in Japan’s 30-year history.

When Japanese bonds collapsed, a chain reaction began:

The yen appreciated sharply. Funds borrowing yen to buy U.S. bonds, stocks, or Bitcoin suddenly faced skyrocketing repayment costs. They had to either close positions immediately or face margin calls and liquidation.

U.S. Treasuries, European bonds, all “long-duration assets” were sold off in tandem as investors scrambled for cash.

Stocks, precious metals, cryptocurrencies—suffered together. When even “risk-free assets” are dumped, other assets are inevitably dragged down.

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

A pure “liquidity black hole.”