Bitcoin Bites Back: BTC Slides Under $60K While AI Eats Its Lunch 🥲

Bitcoin dropped below $60,000 on Wednesday for the second time this month, with $BTC last changing hands at $59,464.98, down 4.34% as the broader crypto sell-off extended a stretch of heavy losses for digital assets.

The decline in crypto tracked sharp pullbacks in gold and oil, each slipping under notable technical thresholds — gold below $4,000 per ounce and oil below $70 per barrel — a reversal of the 2025 "debasement trade" that had previously lifted hard assets on concerns over government debt and fiat currencies.

Risk markets told a different story. The Nasdaq was up 0.8% at midday, with bitcoin down 3.2% in the same window, as the AI trade continued to absorb investor capital. South Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix filed Wednesday to raise nearly $30 billion in a U.S. share offering, the largest overseas capital raise since Saudi Aramco's $26 billion sale in 2019.

Hedge fund manager Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management addressed the divergence on Tuesday, telling CNBC he has become "a little bit more worried" about bitcoin's trajectory. "I don't know what to think about Bitcoin anymore," Laffont said, citing competition from companies such as SpaceX and emerging AI firms and the rise of stablecoins as factors reshaping how investors evaluate the asset.