AI stock whiplash drags crypto lower as August looms

Thursday’s AI stock bounce lasted about as long as a New Year’s resolution. Samsung and SK Hynix each surged roughly 25% as South Korea’s KOSPI index snapped back from a punishing 25% plunge that had accumulated over weeks of brutal selling. For a few hours, it looked like the bottom might be in for the AI trade. Then Friday happened, and the bounce evaporated. Crypto, which had been watching the AI sector like a nervous passenger in the backseat, drifted lower alongside it. The numbers paint a grim picture Bitcoin slipped below $63K, shedding 3% over the past 24 hours and 2% over the trailing week. Not catastrophic on its own, but the direction of travel is what matters here. Ethereum didn’t fare much better, trading near $1,860 with a 2.8% daily decline. Solana hovered around $73, down 2% on the day, while XRP sat at $1.06. The broader mood is about as cheerful as you’d expect. The Fear & Greed Index, tracked by Alternative.me, reads 25, which translates to “Extreme Fear.” That’s down from 28 a week ago, when the reading was merely “Fear.” So we’ve graduated from worried to panicked. Progress. Among major crypto categories, DeFi was technically the top performer over the past...