Live updates: Bitcoin rises to $84,000 as SpaceX leads markets higher

Big gains for SpaceX, up 10%, and Tesla, up 4%, are helping the Nasdaq to 0.7% advance in the first 30 minutes of trading on Wednesday.

A 3% decline for Netflix, post-earnings, and a 2% drop for Google are keeping the index from a larger move.

U.S. Treasury bond yields are lower by about 3 basis points across the board even as yields rise in Europe.

Bitcoin is slightly adding to gains, now up 2.5% in the past 24 hours to $83,750.

Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, says AI is “almost certainly” in a bubble, with companies struggling to translate heavy spending into productivity gains and profits. However, he expects the technology to drive entrepreneurship and create lasting market leaders.

While, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink warns that slowing data center construction could fuel inflation by keeping computing costs high and threaten economic growth. Fink argues faster expansion would lower costs as AI demand accelerates, while warning that rising Treasury yields reflect mounting concerns over the US fiscal deficit.

Chatter about a possible merger between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla is lifting U.S. stock index futures (Nasdaq 100 +0.6%), and Europe’s Stoxx 50 is higher by 0.9%. Bitcoin is off yesterday’s lows, rising to $83,400.

France’s stressed government bond market, though, is showing more cracks. The 10-year OAT yield rose above 5% earlier for the first time since 2022. It’s currently edged back to 4.995%, up nearly 8 basis points on the day.

The German 10-year Bund yield is higher by just 2.8 basis points, raising the Bund/OAT spread to 158 basis points, the highest since the EU debt crisis of 2011.

“Is France spinning out of control?,” went an FT opinion piece yesterday, written by Le Monde’s Sylvie Kaufmann.

“Decades of uncontrolled public spending — France has not had a balanced budget since 1974 — and years of ‘whatever it takes’ after the pandemic have pushed the public deficit to 5.4% of GDP this year,” wrote Kaufman. “The national debt has reached 119%, its highest level since 1946, and keeps ballooning.”

“The current unrest, if it continues, will scare away investors. This is a bad but not insurmountable situation. Remedies do exist — but who will muster the political courage to launch the necessary reforms?”

Bitcoin is hanging just above $82,500 on Wednesday, the level XS.com’s Simon-Peter Massabni calls its most important support, as stock futures climbed on SpaceX’s blowout results and oil pushed back above $110.

Bitcoin’s fate is tied to tech again. It fell in lockstep with the Nasdaq last week after the hot U.S. inflation report and a selloff in AI and chip stocks, and Massabni, XS.com’s head of business development, said that link is getting stronger.

“In the short term, this development challenges the notion that Bitcoin can consistently serve as an independent safe haven from traditional market volatility,” he said.

A “decisive and sustained break” below $82,500 could hand control to sellers and expose bitcoin to a drop toward $70,000, Massabni said. That’s the downside case laid out by market maker Wintermute, and it would mean a further 15% slide from here.

Tech gave bitcoin some cover on Wednesday.

Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.4% and S&P 500 futures 0.2%. SpaceX jumped 9% before the open after its AI and satellite internet businesses drove earnings well above forecasts, and a report that Anthropic may spend $750 billion on computing power eased worries about the AI spending boom.

Brent topped $110 a barrel on attacks near the Strait of Hormuz, and Treasury yields edged higher. Meta and Tesla report later Wednesday.

A move back above $84,000 would take the $70,000 scenario off the table.