Bitcoin fell to $62,715 in Asian hours on Friday, down 1.9% on the day and 14.5% on the week, as the artificial intelligence trade that has driven global risk assets through 2026 ran out of breath.
Ether fell a sharper 4.8% to $1,696 and is now down more than 15% on the week, while Solana fell 5.4% to $66.51, bringing its seven-day loss to 18.5%.
The sale was conducted from outside crypto. Broadcom’s quarterly AI chip outlook missed lofty expectations on Wednesday, pausing a months-long rally in semiconductor stocks from their war-fueled lows.
Nasdaq 100 futures fell 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 clearest band on AI expansion, fell 4.7%, with chip maker SK Hynix down 8%. MSCI’s Asia-Pacific shares fell 1.4 percent.
The currency markets carried their own stress signal. The Korean won extended a slide to a 2009 low. The Indonesian rupiah traded near record lows against the dollar as foreign investors pulled 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 of a coordinated risk-off shift that has been quietly building throughout the week.
Crypto was sitting right in that picture. Hyperliquid’s HYPE, which had been the only top-10 token to stay in the green on a weekly basis, fell 14.8% to $62.14, erasing almost all of its recent outperformance and leaving only a thin gain of 1.5% for the week.
The tale of high-cash-flow tokens rotating to a bid while the rest of the crypto hemorrhage lasted less than a single trading session. Zcash, the other lone green dot from yesterday’s rankings, has now given back its weekly outperformance and then some.
The structural background has not softened. US spot bitcoin ETFs have now recorded 13 consecutive sessions of net outflows totaling about $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. Combined, these two flows have removed a structural bid that supported bitcoin through most of the past 18 months.
The next test is Friday’s US non-farm payrolls report. A soft print would revive expectations of Federal Reserve tapering under newly confirmed Chairman Kevin Warsh, pushing down real yields and likely sending AI trading up again, taking crypto with it.
A hot print does the opposite. Until the data lands, the path of least resistance for both stocks and crypto is the one they are already on.
