Nearly $1 trillion dollars...

That's how much value was wiped out of the cryptocurrency market at one point Wednesday.

A full meltdown after China announced a ban on its financial and payment companies providing any services for the cryptocurrency industry.

Bitcoin, the most visible of the new digital currencies, temporarily plunged all the way to the $30,000 mark for the first time in 3-1/2 months.

Other cryptos like ethereum, doge coin and lite coin, tumbled as well - in one of the biggest plunges since March 2020.

It could have been even worse.

A cryptic crypto message on Twitter from the patron saint of crypto - AKA Tesla CEO Elon Musk - helped digital currencies shed some of their losses.

Diamond hand emojis from Musk: social media short-hand for an investor who's standing firm.... or taking a rock-hard position on a trade or investment, was enough to help cryptos pull off their worst levels of the day.....

even though it's not clear what Musk was referring to.

Musk has been a central figure in cryptos rise and fall.

Bitcoin has roughly been cut in half since last month's record high after Musk did an about face and said Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin for payment.

Wednesday's cryptocurrency slump spilled over into the stock market.

Coinbase, the world's largest publicly-traded cryptocurrency exchange, tumbled even further from its historic April debut...

amid reports it suffered an outage due to the stampede from crypto.

Other companies exposed to crypto or the blockchain, like Square and Riot Blockchain, suffered big stock declines as well.

Even with Wednesday's crypto carnage - the price of bitcoin is up more than 100 percent over the past six months and up more than 30 percent so far this year.