Korea's Chip Carnage Can't Catch Bitcoin's Coattails 🚀

South Korea's KOSPI plunged 5.5% during Tuesday's Asian session, extending a slide that has left the benchmark roughly 38% below its June peak, while bitcoin ($BTC) held well above its summer lows after rebounding from around $58,000 to as high as $87,000. The two assets show a moderately negative 20-week rolling correlation of -0.41, according to TradingView data, indicating that the cryptocurrency has moved in the opposite direction of Seoul's chip-heavy index during the recent drawdown.

The latest leg lower in Seoul was triggered by reports that ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China's largest memory maker, had reported progress on a denser 4F² chip design over the weekend. TrendForce has estimated the design could lift memory density by 30% to 50%, and CXMT aims to ship server memory built on the technology by year-end — a higher-value segment where Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix currently compete. Samsung and SK Hynix each fell around 5% by 9:13 a.m. in Seoul, with later reporting putting SK Hynix down roughly 10% and Samsung down 7%. The two chipmakers hold more than half the KOSPI by market value, and the index itself fell nearly 5% to 6,100 in early trade before trimming losses to a 4.06% decline by 9:49 a.m. in Seoul.

The KOSPI extends a 3.7% slide on Monday and sits 10.1% lower over five days, even as the benchmark remains up 44.89% for 2026. Samsung and SK Hynix pushed the index past 9,000 in June; it now trades more than 30% below that mark. The Korea Times reported that CXMT still struggles to stabilize yields on high-bandwidth memory and that Samsung and SK Hynix already sample the newer HBM4E generation. CXMT controlled about 8% of global DRAM revenue in the first quarter, per Counterpoint Research, with Samsung leading at 38%, SK Hynix at 29% and Micron Technology (MU) at 22%. Korean chip stocks have flinched at CXMT before: the KOSPI fell more than 8% and triggered a circuit breaker after the company's July debut in Shanghai.

The selloff was compounded by comments from Broadcom (AVGO) CEO Hock Tan, who likened speculative AI investing to gambling in a casino, according to the Financial Times. His remarks intensified concerns about whether the industry can generate returns sufficient to justify enormous infrastructure spending. Foreign investors sold a net 341.4 billion won of shares on Tuesday while individuals and institutions bought, according to data cited by SBS News, which also noted that share buybacks at the chipmakers were near completion. In U.S. trading overnight, Micron fell 3.9% and SanDisk (SNDK) fell 6%, according to Bloomberg, with both stocks down around 3% in premarket trading on Tuesday. Kiwoom Securities researcher Han Ji-young said he expected dip buying to spark a rebound during the session. Bitcoin continued to trade between $81,000 and $84,000 as altcoins slid, according to separate market data.