Ether, XRP and dogecoin fall 9% as AI stocks lure buyers from crypto

Ether, XRP and dogecoin each fell roughly 9% over the past week, leading a broad crypto selloff as money rotated toward AI stocks, CoinDesk data show.

"Bitcoin approached $58,000 at its lows late Thursday and early Friday, but in both cases, aggressive buying quickly pushed it back into the $60,000 range," Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro chief market analyst, said. "Given deteriorating sentiment among institutional investors and their ability to quickly divest from cryptocurrencies to stabilise their balance sheets, it is worth preparing for continued pressure."

Dogecoin slid 9.6% over seven days to about $0.076 and Hyperliquid's HYPE lost 9.9%, the steepest falls among the majors. Ether dropped 8.4% to about $1,581 and XRP fell 7.8% to $1.06, while solana and tron held up better, roughly flat on the week at $72 and $0.32, per CoinDesk data. Bitcoin was the steadier major, down 5.3% to around $60,345 after dipping to about $58,800 on Friday and recovering.

The $50,000 to $60,000 zone is where buyers have historically stepped in for bitcoin, said Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks. He pointed to $55,000 as the support to watch below and $61,000 to $62,000 as the level bulls need to reclaim, and advised keeping position sizes sensible.

Capital Rotation Accelerates

The contrast with equities remained stark. Wall Street rotated out of chipmakers that have led the market and into a broader set of companies tied to steady growth. The S&P 500 closed little changed, but most of its members rose, and the equal-weighted version of the index, which strips out the dominance of the largest stocks, hit a record high. Falling oil helped sentiment, while semiconductor shares took another leg down after a run that still left them on track for their best quarter ever.

The swings in chip stocks point to a bigger shift. Optimism around AI is giving way to worries about how far valuations have run, and while few think the AI trade is over, the idea that those stocks only rise is fading. Money leaving semiconductors is spreading into the rest of the market rather than out of risk altogether, and crypto is not catching any of it.

On-Chain and Macro Headwinds

The drags specific to crypto remain. Outflows from US spot bitcoin ETFs, a hawkish Federal Reserve and a strong dollar have weighed all week, and bitcoin is still sitting on its 200-week moving average, a long-term line that has marked extended weak stretches before. Over $1 billion in crypto positions were liquidated in the last 24 hours, affecting approximately 178,000 market participants, according to Coinglass data.

Risk appetite is not gone, only selective, and for now it is passing crypto by.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.