Are you lately staring at the candlestick charts until your eyes hurt? The market is green when you open it, but all the news feeds are about Yen hikes and liquidity tightening, even friends playing gold next to you are asking, "Will the crypto market just wipe out completely?"

Let me tell you honestly. People who go all-in at this point either have deep pockets or haven't experienced a real market crash.

Especially during this "devil period" before Christmas—the crypto world tends to become deadened due to the withdrawal of Western and European funds, and with the Yen as a variable, the scene could be crazier than the FTX incident in 2022. Today, I won't beat around the bush; I'll use the financial history of the past 30 years to clarify why a move in the Yen causes the entire global crypto scene to shake.

**How did the Yen become an invisible support for global assets?**

Over the past thirty years, the Bank of Japan has kept interest rates firmly near zero, basically at zero interest rate levels. In simple terms, borrowing Yen is cheaper than borrowing from friends, with almost negligible interest. This situation has led to the most classic move in finance: borrowing Yen with leverage, then pouring the money into global assets—US stocks, US bonds, Bitcoin, various cryptocurrencies—investing wherever prices rise. Industry jargon calls this the "Yen carry trade."

Imagine this: I borrow 100 million Yen, with interest nearly zero, then convert it to USD to buy Bitcoin. As long as the price rises by 5%, I cash out, convert back to Yen to pay off the debt, and keep the rest as pure profit. This kind of low-risk business is played much more by institutional investors than retail traders. How much "hot money" in the global market is supported by Yen financing that is almost free? Impossible to estimate.

But every game has its dead end: once the Yen appreciates (which basically means interest rates rise), the cost of borrowing skyrockets, and hot money has to rush out, selling assets quickly to convert back to Yen and pay off debts. At this point, the entire crypto market will come under pressure.