JPMorgan Breaks Down November’s Crypto Meltdown

Crypto trading volumes took a tumble last month as the market suffered a broad-based pullback, according to Wall Street bank JPMorgan.

The bank flagged a sharp slowdown in stablecoin turnover, with average daily volume down 26% month-on-month, and significantly weaker decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) volumes as well.

Concerns over leverage in the system, talk of a possible new crypto winter and underperformance versus equities all weighed on valuations and activity, overshadowing a handful of M&A deals and product launches, analysts led by Kenneth Worthington said in the Tuesday report.

Flows into U.S. listed crypto products also turned negative, the analysts wrote. U.S. bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw $3.4 billion in net outflows in November, wiping out October’s net inflows.

U.S. ether exchange-traded products logged their worst month on record, with $1.4 billion in net redemptions, the report noted.

Trading activity deteriorated as well. Overall spot volumes fell 19% month-on-month in November, based on CoinDesk Data, with TradingView suggesting a similar ~23% decline, JPMorgan said.

Bitcoin’s BTC$90,302.01 market value dropped 17% to $1.8 trillion, still outperforming ether ETH$3,182.43, whose market cap slid 22% to $361 billion, the analysts wrote.

Crypto materially underperformed traditional equity benchmarks, with the S&P 500 flat and the Nasdaq 100 down about 2% last month.

The total crypto market capitalization fell 17% to $3.04 trillion, while crypto-related public equities lost 21% of their value.

Read more: JPMorgan Maintains Bitcoin’s Gold-Linked Target at $170K Despite Recent Drop