Historical replay · ETH/USD
Ethereum's 'Black Monday' Carry-Trade Crash (August 2024)
On August 5, 2024, a Bank of Japan rate hike unwound a massive global "carry trade," triggering the worst single day for Japanese stocks since 1987 and sending Ethereum crashing more than 20% intraday. Watch the global macro shock unfold hour by hour.
For years, traders had borrowed cheaply in Japanese yen (where interest rates sat near zero) to invest in higher-yielding assets worldwide — a strategy known as the "yen carry trade." In late July 2024, the Bank of Japan unexpectedly raised interest rates, making that borrowing suddenly more expensive and triggering a rapid, global unwind of carry-trade positions.
On August 5, Japan's Nikkei 225 posted its worst single-day drop since the 1987 Black Monday crash, and the shockwave hit risk assets worldwide, crypto included. Ethereum fell from an intraday open near $2,689 to a low around $2,111 — a drop of roughly 21% within hours — before staging a partial recovery the same day.
The episode became a case study in how a policy decision on the other side of the world, in a market most crypto traders don't watch closely, can move Bitcoin and Ethereum just as violently as a crypto-native headline — a reminder that in a globally interconnected market, the next shock doesn't have to originate anywhere near the asset it hits.