Nasdaq slip tests crypto’s decoupling story as BTC and ETH hold up

Nasdaq drops 1% and the S&P 500 0.6%, but Bitcoin near $75k and Ethereum around $2.3k show crypto holding up better than U.S. tech — at least intraday.

U.S. equities opened the week on the back foot, with Gate’s TradFi desk reporting that the Nasdaq fell roughly 1%, the S&P 500 dropped nearly 0.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid about 0.27%, adding another red session to a bruising April for risk assets.

The move comes on top of a first‑quarter backdrop in which the Nasdaq was already down 7.1% year‑to‑date, the S&P 500 off 4.6% and the Dow lower by 3.6%, according to a recent Gate recap that blamed “geopolitical and energy‑driven headwinds” for the worst quarter in a year.

Yet by 9 a.m. EST on April 20, the two largest cryptocurrencies were showing more resilience than U.S. tech benchmarks, with Bitcoin changing hands at about $75,324.58 and Ethereum at $2,317.80, both modestly higher than their early‑morning prints despite the equity wobble.

Data compiled by Yahoo Finance shows Bitcoin opened Monday at $73,820.11, down 2.5% from Sunday’s $75,723.69, before rebounding above $75,240 by 7:35 a.m. EST, a swing that left BTC up roughly 1.9% off the lows even as futures pointed to a weaker Nasdaq open.

Ethereum followed a similar pattern, starting the day at $2,263.49 — 3.7% below its Sunday level — and then climbing back to about $2,307.37 by mid‑morning, putting spot ETH slightly above the $2,300 “line in the sand” highlighted in recent derivatives and liquidation analysis.

Fortune’s daily crypto dashboard puts the 9 a.m. Ethereum price at $2,317.80, roughly $730 higher than a year ago, underlining how the asset’s 40.3% year‑on‑year gain sits awkwardly next to a Nasdaq that is negative on the year.

That divergence has revived the debate over whether Bitcoin and Ethereum are finally decoupling from growth equities or simply lagging broader risk‑off moves.

In a prior crypto.news story on Ethereum liquidation risk, on‑chain and derivatives data suggested that a break below $2,040 could trigger up to $1.4 billion in long liquidations, a reminder that even if spot ETH looks steady against the S&P on some days, leverage still binds crypto tightly to macro shocks.

Listed crypto proxies, meanwhile, remain firmly in the equity bucket.

Coinbase stock closed at $206.33 on April 17, up 3.26% on the day but still nursing a 28.5% year‑to‑date drawdown to around $263.26 earlier this month as Barclays downgraded the shares on softer trading revenue, according to MEXC’s summary of the exchange’s latest earnings.

For traders watching both screens, Monday’s tape offered a neat snapshot.

The Nasdaq’s 1% slip and S&P 500’s 0.6% drop kept pressure on high‑beta tech, but Bitcoin above $75,000 and Ethereum near $2,300 showed that crypto can, at least intraday, shrug off modest equity weakness — even as history and recent crypto.news coverage of correlated sell‑offs suggest that a deeper stock‑market break would quickly test that independence.