More than $60 billion wiped from ASX in market rout
Updated ,first published
Australia’s stock market has recorded its biggest one-day fall since US President Donald Trump’s market carnage on last year’s “Independence Day”; Bitcoin has fallen in value amid a global rout in cryptocurrencies.
The S&P/ASX200 fell big on Friday, closing down 2 per cent amid big declines in many major sectors such as technology shares, banks and mining shares.
That decline meant more than $60 billion worth of shares were wiped out on the ASX on Friday. This follows a massive sell-off on Wall Street overnight and as the meltdown in cryptocurrencies also gathers pace; Bitcoin this week hit its lowest level since Trump’s 2024 election victory.
Despite Trump’s support for the cryptocurrency market and pro-crypto policies, Bitcoin has nearly halved from a record high of over $124,000 in October last year to $64,907 as of Friday afternoon, while other speculative crypto assets have also fallen sharply.
The decline in crypto prices is hitting investors in the digital asset hard, but Steve Orenstein, who runs a software business with 12.3 bitcoins ($1.1 million) on its balance sheet, dismissed the recent price drops saying he was “not too impressed.”
Orenstein is the chief executive of Locate Technologies, a logistics software company that chose to hold its bitcoin assets and moved its listing from the ASX to the New Zealand Stock Exchange last year mainly because the NZX allowed the company to buy more bitcoin.
He noted that Bitcoin has long been volatile, but said he believes government-issued currencies around the world have lost value because the government has taken on large debts and printed “massive amounts of money.”
When Orenstein spoke at a bitcoin event in Brisbane this week, he said there was no fear among the 60-odd attendees about the price of the digital asset.
“It’s not a trading asset. It’s a long-term holding that has a very strategic reason to do it,” he said of the company’s bitcoin investment.
While Bitcoin has been in decline for months, this week’s dramatic decline comes as investors also abandon software stocks amid fears about the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence.
“It is clear that the crypto market is now in full delivery mode,” said Nic Puckrin, co-founder and investment analyst at Coin Bureau. “If previous cycles are anything to go by, it is no longer a short-term fix but a transition from deployment to reset, and these typically last months, not weeks.”
Share prices of crypto-exposed businesses on the ASX have also taken a hit, with fintech giant Block falling 7 per cent on Friday.
While no sector was spared on the ASX, technology shares fell particularly sharply; Wisetech lost 4.6 percent, NextDC lost 3.9 percent and TechnologyOne lost 5 percent.
Mining shares closed in the red, with BHP losing 3.1 percent and Fortescue losing 1.2 percent. Rio Tinto fell into recession after it was revealed that the company had abandoned merger talks with Glencore to create the world’s largest miner.
Among gold stocks, Northern Star lost 1.7 percent and Evolution Mining lost 1.4 percent. Silver player South32 lost 4.5 percent as volatility in precious metals markets continued.
Energy stocks fell sharply as oil prices fell after Iran announced it would begin negotiations with the United States, reducing the risk of military conflict and supply disruptions from the OPEC producer. Woodside Energy lost 1.6 percent and Santos fell 1.4 percent.
With the decline of the big four banks, financial stocks also fell. Commonwealth Bank fell 0.2 percent, Westpac fell 1.2 percent, National Australia Bank fell 1.6 percent and ANZ Bank fell 1.5 percent. As a result, the ASX 200 index fell 180.4 points to 8,708.80; This was the sharpest decline since last April, when Trump announced tariff plans that spooked the market.
The Australian dollar was at ¢69.61 at 17:17 AEDT.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell 1.2 percent, its sixth loss in seven days since hitting an all-time high. The Dow Jones fell 592 points, or 1.2 percent, and the Nasdaq composite fell 1.6 percent.
Alphabet dragged on the market, falling 0.5 percent after recouping an earlier 8 percent loss, even as Google’s parent company, YouTube and other businesses reported stronger profits than analysts expected in the latest quarter. Investors instead focused on how much Alphabet was spending on AI technology and questioned whether it was worth it.
Alphabet said its spending on equipment and other investments could double this year to roughly US$180 billion ($260 billion). That exceeded analysts’ expectations of less than $119 billion, according to FactSet.
On Wall Street’s winning side were companies that would benefit from Alphabet’s big spending and others riding the AI craze. Chip company Broadcom gained 0.8 percent.
Staff reporter, AP, with Reuters
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Clancy Yeates is deputy business editor. He covered banking and financial services and was previously a national business correspondent in the Canberra bureau.Connect with: X or email.
