Bitcoin Climbs to $78K as AI Slowdown Call Knocks Nasdaq Futures 1.65%

Crypto Rallies While the AI Trade Cracks

Bitcoin climbed as high as $78,280 on Monday, up 1.93% since midnight UTC, on a day when the technology stocks that usually move alongside it were falling hard.

Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 1.65% and S&P 500 futures fell 0.7%, according to CoinDesk. Nvidia was down 2.4% in premarket trading, Intel was down 5.6%, Marvell Technology was down 6.3%, and South Korea’s chip-heavy Kospi index fell 3.26%.

Crypto went the other way. Ether rose 2.1% to $2,513, XRP gained 3.3%, and 94 of the 100 tokens in the CoinDesk 100 index traded higher, the broadest advance in two weeks.

The Essay That Rattled Tech Stocks

The selloff traces back to an essay published on Saturday by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, titled We Must Pace the Frontier. In it, he argues that AI companies should slow the pace of improvement of their most capable models so that safety research can catch up.

The essay lays out a three-part plan: embedded third-party evaluators with employee-like access to frontier labs, coordinated safety standards among companies in democratic countries, and eventual international limits on the most dangerous capabilities. Anthropic said it would adopt the first step on its own.

What unsettled investors was the reaction. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” and Elon Musk replied, “Dario is right.” When the leaders of the largest labs agree that the race should slow, the growth assumptions behind chip and data centre stocks come into question.

Why Bitcoin Usually Moves With Tech Stocks

For much of the past two years, analysts have described Bitcoin as a risk asset, meaning it tends to rise and fall with the Nasdaq rather than with gold or bonds.

The reason is simple. Many of the same hedge funds, ETFs and retail traders hold both Bitcoin and technology shares. When they need to cut risk, they sell crypto and tech stocks together, so a bad day for Nvidia often becomes a bad day for the BTC price too.

Monday broke that pattern, at least for one session. The selling was specific to AI, not a general retreat from risk. Oil rose nearly 4% after Saudi Arabia closed a pipeline, the dollar index gained 0.5%, and gold slipped 0.8%. Money rotated between sectors rather than leaving, and crypto was on the receiving end.

ETF Money Went the Other Way Last Week

The spot rally arrived after a week in which institutional money had been leaving Bitcoin funds.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $462.7 million in net outflows last week, Cointelegraph reported, citing Farside Investors data. Thursday alone saw $282.7 million withdrawn, the largest daily outflow since July. ARK 21Shares led the exits with $234.2 million, followed by Grayscale at $129.1 million, BlackRock at $52.5 million and Fidelity at $50.7 million.

Ether ETFs told a different story, taking in nearly $197 million over the same week, with BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust adding $148.8 million on Friday alone.

The outflows have not erased Bitcoin’s September gains. The funds remain $307.3 million net positive through Friday, but last week’s direction of travel was out, not in, which makes Monday’s spot strength more notable.

Derivatives Traders Lean Long but Not Aggressively

Futures positioning suggests traders are cautiously adding exposure rather than chasing the move.

Bitcoin open interest rose 2.07% to $24.8 billion and Ether open interest climbed 2.97% to $14.8 billion, per CoinDesk. Daily liquidations came to $127.8 million, roughly half of Friday’s total.

The aggregate funding rate sat at 0.0066%, up from 0.0038% on Friday morning, with a long-to-short ratio of 1.15. Annualised futures premiums of 5.5% to 6.2% on Deribit and Binance sit only modestly above the Fed funds rate range of 3.5% to 3.75%, a sign that leverage is present but not stretched. Anyone following crypto news today will recognise the difference from a blow-off top.

The $81,700 Wall Between Bitcoin and a Confirmed Bull Market

Whether Monday’s move matters depends on what happens at the levels just above the current price.

CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno wrote on Friday that Bitcoin faces a resistance band between $77,100 and $80,200, where long-term holders sold 539,000 BTC over the past 30 days. Above that sits $81,700, the 365-day moving average that CryptoQuant treats as the confirmation line for a new bull market, then $83,600 and $88,700. “The trend is still constructive, but a wall of resistance stands in the way,” Moreno said.

On the downside, he identified $70,000 at the 200-day moving average and a $62,000 to $65,000 zone where long-term holders accumulated 476,000 BTC this year.

Two events this week could decide which way the range breaks. The Senate holds its procedural vote on the CLARITY Act on Tuesday, and the Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise rates by 25 basis points to 3.75% to 4% on Wednesday. Last week, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said Bitcoin had bottomed, but a rate hike alongside a failed Senate vote could quickly test that call.

A Decoupling or a One-Day Divergence?

Bitcoin remains 4.8% below its September peak of $82,284, and the move from $64,000 in August is still being digested, so one green session against a red Nasdaq does not establish a new regime.

Short stretches in which crypto ignores equities have tended to end when a macro shock hits both markets, and Wednesday’s Fed decision is exactly that kind of event. If Bitcoin holds above $77,000 through a rate hike while tech stocks stay under pressure, the case for a genuine break from the AI trade would strengthen.

If instead ETF outflows continue and spot demand fades, Monday may be remembered as a rotation rather than a decoupling. For now, the more defensible reading is that crypto sat out a sector-specific selloff. That is a smaller claim than independence, but it is one Bitcoin could not make for most of the past two years.