Correlation Collapse in Stress
Assets that behave differently in calm markets tend to move together in stress, so apparent variety within digital assets narrows exactly when it matters.
How it happens
Distinct narratives do not imply distinct plumbing. The same market makers quote across many assets and pull quotes across all of them at once; the same collateral backs leverage in unrelated markets; the same lenders fund positions in several tokens simultaneously, so one default forces sales in all of them. Most pairs are quoted against the dollar or a dollar stablecoin, which imports a common factor by construction, and cross-margin structures at large venues convert an idiosyncratic loss into forced selling elsewhere. On top of this, the whole asset class responds to broad liquidity conditions, so periods of tightening tend to compress differences between assets rather than reveal them.
What you can actually observe
Measure rolling correlations across regimes rather than reading a single long-run average, and look specifically at correlation during the largest historical drawdowns. Map shared infrastructure: overlapping market makers, shared lenders, shared collateral, and common venues. Where a token claims independence from broader conditions, check whether the historical record shows it decoupling during actual stress windows rather than during quiet periods.
Precedent
In 2022 digital assets broadly declined together as interest rates rose, and the failures of several large lenders and of FTX transmitted losses across tokens that had no technical relationship to one another.
What makes it more or less material
Relevant conditions include correlation measured in drawdowns rather than averages, the degree of shared market makers and lenders, whether the asset is used as collateral elsewhere, and its history in prior stress episodes.