Global financial markets are still reeling from that turmoil. This turbulence swept through the emerging cryptocurrency sector, sparked by China’s threat of revenge actions against U.S.-allied nations in protracted bilateral trade conflicts. SAFE’s announcement drove a panic selling frenzy that saw Bitcoin’s price drop precipitously from $67,300 to $64,500 in less than one hour. The downturn rattled the crypto market, bringing all market capitalization down 3%. Meanwhile, volumes on the exchange climbed 15% as investors scrambled to reposition their portfolios.

Bitcoin’s drop was an instant shocker, with the BTC/USD pair on Binance tanking by 4.2% in the first hour. Over this period, trading volumes exploded to an astounding 2.5 million BTC. At the same time, the ETH/USDT pair on Coinbase dropped by 4.7% while seeing an extremely high volume of 1.8 million ETH traded. Ethereum itself went from $3,200 to $3,050 during that same period.

The market-wide downturn impacted AI-related cryptocurrencies. From the last measured price, within the first hour of the announcement, Fetch.ai (FET) was down -6%. In the meantime, SingularityNET (AGIX) was down 5%. AI-related trading volumes for AGIX increased by over 20%. Market participants, particularly algorithmic traders, soon flipped their positions to take advantage or hedge against the volatile stock movements. Indeed, as of late October, the correlation coefficient between AGIX and Bitcoin was 0.85, suggesting that AGIX had a strong positive relationship with Bitcoin.

Several technical indicators reflected the bearish sentiment. During the last weekend of October, Bitcoin closed below its 50-day moving average of $68,000, a sign of a possible downtrend. Additionally, Bitcoin’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) fell to 42. This suggests that Bitcoin is not overbought or oversold. Downside still has room to go. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell from 62 to 55, a sign that investors have become more fearful.

Ethereum’s on-chain data reflected the market’s response, with gas usage plummeting 8% as transaction volume fell substantially. Bitcoin Network Hash Rate decreased by 5% to 230 EH/s. This decline is a sign that miners are capitulating as prices crash. Open interest in Bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) rose 10%.