SK Hynix has become the dominant supplier of these chips, a position that made it South Korea’s most valuable listed company this month, overtaking Samsung for the first time in 25 years. The two companies together supply most of the world’s HBM and have entered into supply agreements with Nvidia and OpenAI.
Such spending is a headwind for crypto because it is the same capital cycle that has been competing with digital assets for investor money all year. Crypto fell through most of the month, even on days when AI chip stocks bounced back — the divergence indicative of how investors view the two classes.
Gabe Selby of CF Benchmarks said much of the new money and attention has flowed into AI games, leaving crypto fighting for a smaller share of overall risk appetite.
The rotation has appeared in places that previously fed crypto directly.
As gold, silver and bitcoin sold off together in recent weeks as a hedge, the money that left these hard assets was moved to AI stocks instead of bitcoin.
Even bitcoin miners have redirected computing power towards AI hosting, where contracted payments beat the fluctuations in mining revenue.
South Korea’s $518 billion commitment is a decade-long bet that AI infrastructure spending is structural rather than a passing boom. Crypto has spent the year on the other side of that flow, and the open question now is whether the money chasing chips and AI lists will eventually circle back or stay put.
