Live markets: Bitcoin returns to $63,000 as Nasdaq trims large early loss

Anthropic is pursuing a deal to rent computing power from Meta (META) AI data centers, which could be valued at up to $10 billion over two years, the NYT reports.

According to the story, Anthropic first proposed the deal in June, and Meta is currently considering it.

META shares are off session lows, now down 2.9%, and data center names — sharply lower earlier in the day — are narrowing losses, with Keel Infrastructure (KEEL) and Hut 8 (HUT) moving into the green.

“Kimi K3 may be an important inflection point for AI,” said Gavin Baker, CIO at Atreides Management. “Potentially negative for Anthropic and OpenAI while being net positive for essentially every other company in the world.”

“A world where there are only 2-3 dominant frontier labs with 90% inference margins is net negative for every other layer while being awesome for those 2-3 labs,” Baker continued. “Those labs would become monopsonies for power, data centers, semiconductors and hyperscalers and would obviously vertically integrate over time into all those layers while also completely subsuming the application/software layers.”

Thirty minutes into Friday’s U.S. session, the Nasdaq is off the lows, but still down 1.8% for the day, with the semiconductor ETF (SOXX) off by 4%.

Bitcoin (BTC) is lower by 2.3% to $62,800 and ether (ETH) by 3.5% to $1,815.

Read more: Bitcoin faces fresh headwinds as China’s Kimi beats Claude, GPT in coding benchmark

Most tied to the AI trade, former bitcoin miners-turned-data-center-providers are leading declines among crypto stocks. Hut 8 (HUT), Bitdeer (DTDR), and MARA Holdings (MARA) are all lower by more than 7%.

Strategy (MSTR) is down 2.25%, with its preferred stock STRC off 1%. Coinbase (COIN), Bullish (BLSH), and Circle (CRCL) are all lower by about 1.5%.

“Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” said Elon Musk Thursday evening. “Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days.”

SPCX shares are lower by 4.4% pre-market to $125.40, roughly 7% below their IPO price of $135.

Bitcoin fell as much as 3% over 24 hours to roughly $62,800, failing to confirm the reversal that this week’s soft inflation print had set up, said Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, in a message to CoinDesk.

The move never produced a higher high, and the price dropped back below its 50-day moving average, returning to the downtrend channel that has held since June.

The lower boundary of that channel sits near $56,000. Before it, Kuptsikevich flags support at $61,000 and $59,000, both previous local lows. External pressure did the work, with a deepening global selloff in chipmakers pulling risk assets lower on Friday.

Bitcoin fell to about $63,000 on Friday, down 1.7% over 24 hours and 2.2% on the week, as a deepening selloff in chipmakers dragged risk assets lower, per CoinDesk data. Ether held better at $1,836, still up 2.4% over seven days, while Hyperliquid led the losses at 8% on the day and 12% on the week.

Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 1.8% and S&P 500 contracts fell 0.9% as a semiconductor ETF slid 3% in premarket trading. Taiwanese stocks fell into a technical correction and Asia’s main benchmark hit a two-month low. Europe held up better on lower tech exposure.

The question driving it is the one that has hung over the sector all month. Chipmakers are under scrutiny over whether the hundreds of billions that AI hyperscalers are spending will produce the returns to justify their valuations, and TSMC’s results this week did not settle it.

Crypto is following the same current it has all quarter. This week’s soft inflation print gave bitcoin a lift toward $65,000, but that was a macro trade, and the chip selloff is pulling the other way. The Fed meets July 28 and 29.