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AI stocks soar while crypto bleeds: What’s really driving the great market divergence?

AI stocks soar while crypto bleeds: What’s really driving the great market divergence?

Despite a wave of optimism in mainstream financial markets following Nvidia’s robust earnings report and bullish forward guidance, the cryptocurrency market has charted a markedly different course. While the S&P 500, NASDAQ, and Dow Jones posted modest but clear gains, crypto traders navigated a landscape of institutional retreat, forced deleveraging, and growing scepticism around altcoin fundamentals.

The disconnect between AI-driven equity euphoria and crypto caution underscores a critical juncture. As traditional markets celebrate the next phase of artificial intelligence integration, digital asset markets confront a confluence of macro headwinds and structural vulnerabilities.

Crypto’s recent underperformance lies in a record-breaking institutional outflow. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust recorded a single-day withdrawal of US$523 million, the largest since its January 2024 debut. This outflow did not occur in isolation. US spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively shed US$1.3 billion in assets under management over the past week, a direct response to diminishing hopes for a December Federal Reserve rate cut.

Market participants now assign only a 27 per cent probability to such a move, a sharp reversal from the more dovish expectations held just weeks prior. For a market increasingly tethered to traditional financial sentiment, with crypto-equity correlations hovering near 0.65, the withdrawal of institutional capital has stripped away a critical support layer. When institutions step back, retail traders rarely fill the void with sufficient conviction, especially in volatile environments.

Compounding this institutional caution is a cascade of leveraged liquidations. Over US$127 million in Bitcoin long positions were forcibly closed in a short window, intensifying downward price pressure as Bitcoin dipped below the psychologically significant US$90,000 mark. This deleveraging occurred against a backdrop of rising open interest in crypto derivatives, which climbed 10.4 per cent to US$889 billion, suggesting that many new positions were opened on borrowed capital.

When volatility spikes or sentiment shifts, such positions become vulnerable. The result is a feedback loop. Price drops trigger margin calls, which force more selling, which pushes prices lower still. The market’s emotional state reflects this stress. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index plummeted to 15, entering the Extreme Fear zone, the lowest reading since March 2025. Technical indicators like the RSI14 at 37.95 signal oversold conditions, but they provide no clear reversal signal, leaving traders in a state of anxious limbo.

Altcoins have fared even worse, revealing the fragility of speculative narratives when liquidity dries up. Solana, once heralded as a high-throughput alternative to Ethereum, plunged 11.47 per cent over the week after Forward Industries, its largest corporate holder, transferred US$201 million worth of SOL to Coinbase Prime. Such large movements of tokens to exchange wallets are often interpreted as preludes to selling, igniting panic among retail holders. BNB and XRP mirrored these losses, declining 4.81 per cent and 12.14 per cent, respectively.

The Altcoin Season Index now stands at 27, well below the 75 threshold that typically signals a broad-based rally in alternative cryptocurrencies. This metric confirms what price action already suggests. It is firmly Bitcoin’s market, and even Bitcoin is struggling to hold ground.

Meanwhile, the macroeconomic backdrop offers little comfort. US Treasury yields remain elevated, with the 10-year at 4.14 per cent and the 2-year at 3.59 per cent. Fed officials have openly pushed back against rate-cut expectations, and the delay in key US jobs data further clouds the policy outlook.

In foreign exchange markets, the US dollar remains firm, while the Japanese yen hovers near 157.2, perilously close to levels that could trigger government intervention. Gold, often a refuge in uncertain times, holds just above US$4,000, reflecting a mixed risk environment where some investors hedge while others chase AI-linked equities.

The divergence between traditional tech and crypto markets raises a fundamental question. Is AI optimism truly a rising tide that lifts all boats, or does it primarily benefit assets with deep institutional integration and clear cash flow narratives? Nvidia’s forecast, projecting US$203 billion in annual revenue, speaks to tangible, near-term AI infrastructure demand.

Its chips power the data centres that train large language models and run inference workloads. Bitcoin and Solana, by contrast, offer no earnings, no dividends, and uncertain regulatory pathways. In a regime of higher-for-longer rates, such assets become less attractive relative to yield-bearing instruments or equities with demonstrable growth.

For investors, the path forward demands discipline. In equities, tech exposure remains compelling but warrants selectivity. In crypto, the current environment favours caution. Traders should monitor Bitcoin ETF flows closely. A reversal from outflows to inflows could signal renewed institutional appetite, especially if softer jobs data revives rate-cut hopes.

Similarly, sustained negative funding rates in perpetual futures markets might indicate capitulation and a potential short-term bottom. Until then, the market’s Extreme Fear reading is not just a metric. It is a warning. The AI boom may be real, but its benefits are not yet flowing into digital asset markets. Instead, crypto finds itself caught in a perfect storm of macro uncertainty, institutional hesitation, and speculative excess unwinding. The rally elsewhere is a reminder of what crypto could be, but not what it is today.

 

Source: https://e27.co/ai-stocks-soar-while-crypto-bleeds-whats-really-driving-the-great-market-divergence-20251120/

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j

Why Bitcoin decoupled from Nasdaq and what it means for the US$112K breakout

Why Bitcoin decoupled from Nasdaq and what it means for the US$112K breakout

The global macro environment entered a pivotal inflexion point this week as political momentum gathered behind a bipartisan Senate effort to end the longest government shutdown in US history. After 42 days without full federal operations, lawmakers cleared a critical procedural hurdle late Sunday, setting the stage for a potential return to normalcy. President Donald Trump signalled his support for the compromise on Monday, catalysing a broad-based rally across risk assets.

US equity markets responded with conviction, as the Nasdaq soared by 2.27 per cent, the S&P 500 climbed 1.54 per cent, and even the more conservative Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced by 0.81 per cent. The relief extended to fixed income markets, where the yield on the 10-year Treasury note edged up by two basis points to 4.11 per cent, reflecting diminished safe-haven demand and renewed confidence in fiscal stability.

While equity and bond markets absorbed the news through classic risk-on behaviour, the cryptocurrency market exhibited a more nuanced reaction. Over the last 24 hours, the total crypto market cap rose 0.74 per cent, building on a 1.89 per cent weekly gain despite the lingering shadow of macro uncertainty. This resilience stemmed not from blind optimism, but from a confluence of three distinct catalysts that spoke directly to longstanding structural challenges within the digital asset ecosystem: regulatory clarity, DeFi tokenomics innovation, and Bitcoin’s evolving relationship with macro liquidity conditions.

The first driver emerged from Capitol Hill, where a bipartisan Senate proposal gained traction to transfer primary regulatory authority over digital assets from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This legislative manoeuvre directly addresses a core grievance within the crypto industry: the SEC’s enforcement-first posture, which many developers, investors, and entrepreneurs view as hostile to innovation. By designating most digital tokens as commodities rather than securities, the bill would place them under the CFTC’s more predictable, principles-based framework.

The market interpreted this shift as a potential inflexion point for institutional adoption. Companies like Coinbase, which have long operated under the threat of SEC litigation, saw their equities rise alongside major tokens such as Ethereum, whose classification has been a source of legal ambiguity. The proposal’s success hinges on maintaining bipartisan support in a fractured Congress, but its mere introduction has already recalibrated market sentiment toward a more constructive outlook on US regulatory policy.

Simultaneously, DeFi sentiment received a powerful jolt from Uniswap, the leading decentralised exchange by volume. The Uniswap Labs team and the Uniswap Foundation introduced a comprehensive restructuring plan dubbed UNIfication, which proposes activating a long-dormant protocol fee switch and implementing a systematic token burn mechanism. Central to the plan is a one-time retroactive burn of 100 million UNI tokens, equivalent to 16 per cent of the total supply, alongside ongoing burns funded by a share of trading and Unichain fees. This directly tackles a foundational criticism of the UNI token: its lack of clear utility and inflationary pressure due to vesting schedules. By redirecting protocol revenue to token holders through buybacks and burns, the proposal aligns incentives across users, liquidity providers, and long-term stakeholders.

The market response was immediate and emphatic, with UNI surging 38 per cent and catalysing broad-based gains across the DeFi sector, including 12 per cent for AAVE and 22 per cent for CAKE. Derivatives volume for DeFi tokens spiked 133 per cent week-over-week, signalling renewed speculative and hedging interest. The ultimate test will come via on-chain governance, where token holders must approve the proposal. A rejection could trigger sharp profit-taking, but the very act of proposing such a bold realignment has reignited optimism about DeFi’s capacity for self-improvement and value accrual.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin reclaimed the US$106,000 level, drawing support from both macro relief and technical dynamics. The resolution of the government shutdown removes a near-term liquidity overhang that had likely suppressed institutional flows into spot Bitcoin ETFs. With federal operations expected to resume, market participants anticipate a resumption of ETF inflows, which have totalled US$7.8 billion in the third quarter of 2025 alone. The rally also exhibits signs of fragility. Open interest in Bitcoin futures declined by 6.3 per cent, suggesting that leveraged long positions remain cautious.

More intriguingly, the 24-hour correlation between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq turned slightly negative at negative 0.12, indicating a subtle decoupling from traditional tech equities. This hints at Bitcoin’s evolving narrative, not merely as a risky tech proxy, but as a distinct macro asset influenced by its own supply dynamics, institutional demand, and on-chain activity. Technical analysts now eye the US$112,000 resistance level, where a decisive breakout could unleash more than US$two billion in long liquidations, potentially accelerating the move higher.

Despite these bullish undercurrents, the broader sentiment remains restrained. The Fear and Greed Index sits at 31, deep in fear territory, and Bitcoin dominance declined by 0.1 per cent on the day, suggesting that capital rotation into altcoins remains tentative. This fragility underscores the market’s awareness that political and protocol-level promises must still translate into concrete outcomes.

The Senate bill transferring oversight to the CFTC faces a long legislative road, and the Uniswap governance vote could fracture consensus. Moreover, the Federal Reserve’s path on interest rates remains uncertain, with soft US economic data lifting gold to US$4,090.96 per ounce and reinforcing expectations of future rate cuts, yet Treasury yields still edged higher on shutdown resolution hopes.

In summary, today’s market gains reflect a delicate balance between hope and caution. Regulatory optimism surrounding the CFTC proposal, DeFi innovation via Uniswap’s tokenomics overhaul, and macro relief from the impending end of the government shutdown have combined to lift asset prices. The sustainability of this rally, particularly of altcoin momentum, will depend on whether these catalysts materialise into real-world changes.

Traders now watch two critical events: the outcome of UNI’s on-chain governance vote and the political trajectory of the bipartisan CFTC bill. Their success or failure will determine whether this week’s optimism evolves into a durable bull phase or fades as another false dawn in crypto’s volatile lifecycle.

 

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j

Why crypto can’t escape the Nasdaq and what it means for the next 30 days

Why crypto can’t escape the Nasdaq and what it means for the next 30 days
The current market environment presents a textbook case of how macroeconomic uncertainty, structural leverage, and sector-specific stress can converge into a self-reinforcing selloff across both traditional and digital asset markets. The recent 5.32 per cent drop in crypto prices over the past 24 hours is not an isolated event but rather the culmination of three interlocking dynamics: miner distress, derivatives deleveraging, and heightened correlation with equities, particularly the Nasdaq-100. Each of these forces feeds into the other, creating a feedback loop that amplifies volatility and accelerates liquidations.

Miner capitulation stands out as one of the most critical bearish catalysts in this cycle. Publicly traded mining firms like Canaan and Hut 8 have seen their equity valuations hammered, with Canaan plunging 14.6 per cent on November 4 to close at US$1.1280 per share. This sharp decline reflects investor anxiety over the sustainability of mining operations as Bitcoin’s price hovers dangerously close to breakeven production costs. Recent data indicates that average mining costs reached US$114,233 as of November 3, while Bitcoin traded below US$101,000 by November 5.

This negative margin environment leaves miners with few options other than selling accumulated Bitcoin reserves to cover electricity, maintenance, and debt obligations. Hut 8’s Q3 2025 earnings report, which showed US$83.5 million in revenue, a 91 per cent year-over-year increase, nonetheless revealed underlying fragility. Despite strong top-line growth driven by scaling operations, the company’s aggressive 1,530 MW expansion plan introduces significant execution and financing risk in a deteriorating price environment.

When miners sell into a falling market, they exacerbate downward momentum, especially when hashprice, the revenue per terahash per second, has already collapsed by 23 per cent since October. The critical technical level to watch remains US$103,000. A decisive break below this support could trigger a wave of forced sales from marginal operators, further depressing spot prices.

Simultaneously, the derivatives market has undergone a dramatic reset. Total open interest in crypto derivatives has contracted by 27.5 per cent month-over-month, falling to US$786 billion, a clear signal that leveraged participants are rapidly de-risking. On November 4 alone, US$851 million in long positions were liquidated, predominantly on perpetual futures contracts where average leverage ratios hover around 25x on major exchanges like Binance.

The shift to negative funding rates, currently at -0.003 per cent, confirms that the market structure has flipped from bullish speculation to defensive shorting or passive hedging. Historically, sustained negative funding often precedes short squeezes, but only after sentiment reaches extreme pessimism. The spot-to-perpetual volume ratio of 0.26 underscores that price discovery is now dominated by derivatives traders reacting to macro headlines rather than organic spot demand.

This dynamic makes the market hypersensitive to external shocks, such as shifts in US Treasury yields or Federal Reserve commentary. With the 10-year yield settling at 4.083 per cent and the 2-year at 3.572 per cent, the yield curve remains inverted, a classic recession warning that weighs heavily on risk assets.

Perhaps most concerning for proponents of crypto’s digital gold narrative is its persistent correlation with tech equities. Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin exhibited a 0.86 correlation with the Nasdaq-100 (QQQ), directly contradicting earlier hopes of decoupling.

While some analysts had pointed to a temporary breakdown in correlation during October, the reversion to high co-movement in early November demonstrates that institutional investors still treat crypto as a high-beta tech proxy rather than an independent store of value. This linkage became evident as US equities tumbled, Nasdaq down two per cent, S&P 500 down 1.2 per cent, dragging crypto lower despite fundamentally different supply mechanics.

Meanwhile, traditional safe havens like gold rose 0.8 per cent, reinforcing the flight-to-quality behaviour that excludes volatile digital assets during risk-off episodes. The strength of the US Dollar Index, which climbed to 100.20 for a fifth consecutive day, further pressures dollar-denominated commodities, including Bitcoin, by increasing the relative cost for foreign buyers.

Taken together, these forces create a precarious equilibrium. Miner selling adds persistent spot supply pressure. Derivatives unwinding removes liquidity and amplifies moves through forced liquidations. And macro correlation ensures that any stumble in US equities instantly transmits to crypto markets. Within this turbulence lies a potential opportunity. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index has plunged to 20, Extreme Fear, the lowest reading since March 2025.

Historically, such extremes often coincide with local bottoms, as panic selling exhausts weak hands and creates conditions for a contrarian rebound. If Bitcoin holds above US$103,000, miners may stabilise their balance sheets, derivatives funding could normalise, and the narrative might shift from capitulation to accumulation. But if that support fails, the path of least resistance points lower, potentially toward the US$95,000 zone where mining economics become untenable for a broader swath of the network.

In either scenario, the market is undergoing a necessary cleansing, a washout that tests conviction and separates speculative froth from durable conviction. For now, all eyes remain on price action at the margin, where every candlestick carries the weight of macro fate and miner survival.

Source: https://e27.co/why-crypto-cant-escape-the-nasdaq-and-what-it-means-for-the-next-30-days-20251105/

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j