Bitcoin fell to $62,715 on Friday, down 1.9% for the day and 14.5% for the week, as the artificial intelligence trade that fueled global risk assets through 2026 lost steam.
Ether fell 4.8% to $1,696 and is now down more than 15% for the week, while Solana fell 5.4% to $66.51, bringing its seven-day loss to 18.5%.
The selling was conducted from outside crypto. Broadcom’s quarterly outlook for AI chips fell short of high expectations on Wednesday, halting a months-long advance in semiconductor stocks from war-related lows.
Nasdaq 100 futures slipped 0.9% on Friday, extending the index to a third straight day of decline. South Korea’s KOSPI, the best-performing major stock index this year and the sharpest index of AI development, fell 4.7%, while chipmaker SK Hynix lost 8%. MSCI’s gauge of Asia-Pacific stocks fell 1.4%.
The foreign exchange markets have issued their own signal of tension. The Korean won extended its slide to its lowest level in 2009. The Indonesian rupiah traded near its all-time low against the dollar as foreign investors withdrew billions from local bond markets.
The Indian rupee bucked the trend after the Reserve Bank of India announced new measures to attract capital inflows. The picture across Asia is one of a coordinated shift in risk aversion that has been gradually building all week.
Crypto was sitting squarely inside this image. Hyperliquid’s HYPE, which was the only green token in the top 10 to hold green on a weekly basis, fell 14.8% to $62.14, erasing almost all of its recent outperformance and leaving only a slim 1.5% gain on the week.
The story of high cash flow tokens turning into a supply while the rest of crypto was bleeding lasted less than a single trading session. Zcash, the other green dot in yesterday’s rankings, has now returned its weekly outperformance and more.
The structural context has not softened. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have now recorded 13 consecutive sessions of net outflows totaling approximately $4.4 billion since mid-May.
Strategy filed its first disclosed Bitcoin sale since 2022 earlier this week, offloading 32 BTC to fund preferred stock dividend obligations. Together, these two flows removed a structural supply that supported Bitcoin for most of the last 18 months.
The next test will be Friday’s report on US non-farm payrolls. A weak figure would revive expectations of Federal Reserve cuts under newly confirmed Chairman Kevin Warsh, depress real yields and likely send AI trading back up, taking crypto with it.
Hot printing does the opposite. Until the data comes in, the path of least resistance for stocks and cryptocurrencies is the one they are already on.
