Bitcoin held steady around $65,000 during early Asian trading on Friday, showing little volatility as the largest US technology stocks saw their market value evaporate by nearly $800 billion. This marks a rare instance of independent movement for an asset that has largely tracked the AI trade throughout January.
The largest cryptocurrency was trading at roughly $65,400, down less than 1% on the day, but posting a 3% gain for the week. Ethereum slipped 3% to $1,879, while most other major tokens also declined. Dogecoin was the worst performer, dropping 5% to $0.069 on the day and 4% for the week. XRP fell 2% to $1.11, Solana dropped 3% to $76, and Hyperliquid's HYPE declined 4% over seven trading days to $58. Despite these moves, the drops were mild compared to the equity market's performance.
The group of mega-cap stocks known as the "Magnificent Seven," which have driven the US stock market rally for three years, reportedly fell 4.8% on Thursday, wiping out $797 billion in market value. This marked the worst single-day performance for the group since the April 2025 sell-off.
The decline dragged the S&P 500 down by 1.2% and the Nasdaq 100 by 1.9%, bringing the sector 11% below its late-May all-time high and erasing $2 trillion in market capitalization.
A key driver was AI spending. Alphabet raised its capital expenditure forecast to as much as $205 billion this year, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk called 2026 "a huge capital expenditure year" after the company reported earnings that fell far short of expectations.
Both reports were released after Wednesday's close, intensifying a concern that has been building for weeks: big tech companies are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure at a pace faster than returns can justify.
This worry has been a major factor driving crypto volatility this month, often with amplified moves. When chip stocks rose, Bitcoin rose; when chip stocks wavered, Bitcoin fell, behaving more like a proxy for the AI capital cycle than a trade based on its own fundamentals.
Whether this represents the beginning of a true decoupling or just a single trading day remains an open question. Bitcoin miners have already pivoted into operators of AI data centers, so a sustained reduction in AI-related spending would eventually impact them, though the link may be slower to transmit than during the upswing.
But after a month in which semiconductors largely dictated crypto's direction, a day where the AI trade broke down while Bitcoin held firm offers the first real sign that the two may not be as tightly linked as the rally had suggested.
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