Crypto index drawdown reached 80% as Ether hit a 15-month low

The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index had fallen approximately 80% from its January 2018 peak by September 12, 2018, a drawdown that contemporaneous Bloomberg reporting said had overtaken the Nasdaq Composite’s 78% peak-to-trough loss after the dot-com bubble. Ether led the latest leg lower, touching its weakest level since May 2017.

That was the consequential market fact of September 12: the broad crypto retreat was no longer only a reversal of late-2017 exuberance. By the index comparison used on that date, it had become a collapse on the scale of a defining technology bust.

What the numbers show

The MVIS benchmark, identified by ticker MVDA10, was designed to track 10 of the largest and most liquid digital assets in U.S. dollars using a modified market-cap weighting. The approximately 80% figure measured the index from its January 2018 high to an intraday September 12 reading. It was not a calendar-year return or a close-to-close loss.

Ether’s move made the pressure visible. CoinMarketCap’s historical daily series, whose market day runs from 00:00 through 23:59 UTC, records a September 12 open of $185.42, high of $185.59, low of $170.26 and close of $183.33. The close was 1.1% below the open, while the intraday range was $15.33, or 8.3% of the opening price. Those percentages are Coinburn calculations from the reported values, rounded to one decimal place.

The same series closed Ether at $295.34 on September 1. The September 12 close was therefore 37.9% lower over that 11-day close-to-close window. This calculation describes price performance only; it does not identify a cause.

A broad selloff, not a Bitcoin replay

Contemporaneous reports placed the nominal value of all cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap near $187 billion, then a 10-month low. That measure had lost more than $640 billion from its January peak. Market capitalization in this context meant circulating token supply multiplied by an aggregated spot price, not cash that could necessarily have been withdrawn at those valuations.

Bitcoin was comparatively stable around September 12 while Ether and many smaller assets absorbed steeper losses. Cointelegraph’s publication-time snapshot reported every top-20 asset except Dogecoin in the red and described Ether at a 15-month low. Because crypto venues trade continuously and reporters sampled different hours and exchanges, their quoted prices and daily percentage changes do not align perfectly with a UTC daily close.

That divergence mattered. The 2017 boom had financed a large field of token projects, many built on Ethereum. By September 12, the market was sharply repricing that wider field even without an equivalent one-session collapse in Bitcoin. It also showed why “the crypto market” could not be reduced to a single Bitcoin quote.

What the dot-com comparison did—and did not—mean

The 80% versus 78% comparison was a drawdown comparison, not proof that digital assets and Nasdaq-listed companies were economically equivalent. The crypto index traded around the clock, held a changing basket of assets and relied on prices from fragmented venues. The Nasdaq Composite represented listed equities, operated in regulated trading sessions and reached its post-bubble trough over a different interval.

The comparison nevertheless captured the scale of destruction from the January 2018 peak. It also highlighted limited spillover into traditional finance: contemporaneous reporting noted that the crypto market’s nominal loss was much smaller than the trillions erased from technology equities and that connections to the banking system remained limited.

Limits of the September 12 record

No single verified announcement explains the September 12 decline. Regulatory enforcement, security concerns, questions about token-project financing and slower-than-hoped institutional adoption were all discussed on that date, but the price record does not establish any one of them as the cause.

The defensible conclusion is narrower: on September 12, 2018, a recognized diversified crypto benchmark reached an approximately 80% peak-to-trough drawdown, while Ether printed a 15-month low and the aggregate market value tracked by CoinMarketCap fell to roughly $187 billion. Those measures documented the depth and breadth of the 2018 bear market without proving what prices would do next.