The Bitcoin price held near $65,000 on Friday, 24 July 2026, showing unusual composure a day after a rout wiped roughly $800 billion from the largest U.S. technology stocks in their worst session since early 2025. Bitcoin traded down less than 1% on the day and was up around 3% on the week, a divergence from equities striking enough that traders began asking whether crypto is finally loosening its grip on the artificial-intelligence trade that has driven both markets for months.
What drove the $800 billion AI selloff
The damage was concentrated in the megacap “Magnificent Seven,” which fell 4.8% on Thursday and shed about $797 billion in market value, their worst day since the tariff-driven selloff of April 2025. The trigger was renewed anxiety over AI capital spending. Alphabet lifted its capital-expenditure forecast to as much as $205 billion for the year, and Tesla, reporting profits well below expectations, described 2026 as “a massive capex year.” Together the disclosures hardened a fear that has stalked markets all month: that Big Tech is pouring hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure faster than returns can justify.
Why the Bitcoin price barely moved
What made the session notable was crypto’s lack of reaction. Through most of July, concerns about AI overspending have tied Bitcoin closely to the technology complex, and a move of that magnitude in AI stocks would typically have dragged Bitcoin down with it. This time it did not. The anxiety driving the equity selloff is the same one that has whipsawed crypto all month, which is precisely what makes the non-reaction significant rather than coincidental. For a market that has spent much of the year trading as a high-beta proxy for AI sentiment, holding firm during an $800 billion equity drawdown is a genuine change of behaviour, even if a brief one.
Decoupling or a single good session?
Analysts are cautious about reading too much into one day. The resilience hints at a possible decoupling from Big Tech, but that thesis is unproven, and there is reason for restraint: the link between crypto and the AI capital cycle has become structural rather than merely correlative, running through shared investor bases, leverage and the growing overlap between crypto miners and AI compute. A single session that looks like independence in real time can read very differently a week later. The more durable question is whether Bitcoin can repeat the performance the next time the AI trade wobbles.
What it means
For institutional allocators, a durable decoupling would matter a great deal. Part of Bitcoin’s appeal in diversified portfolios rests on the idea that it does not move in lockstep with equities; a year of tight correlation to the AI trade had eroded that argument. Friday’s session, if it proves to be more than noise, would partly restore it. But one day is not a trend, and the prudent reading is that the correlation regime is being tested, not broken.
The backdrop also matters for timing. Markets are watching the Federal Reserve’s late-July meeting and unresolved U.S. stablecoin rulemaking, either of which could reset risk appetite quickly. Readers weighing the setup can review Cryptonite’s Bitcoin price outlook for the second half of 2026 and the shifting flows detailed in our coverage of the 2026 crypto ETF rotation. As always, past resilience is not a forecast, and nothing here should be read as a price prediction.
Frequently asked questions
Why did the Bitcoin price hold while AI stocks fell? Bitcoin stayed near $65,000 even as the Magnificent Seven shed roughly $800 billion, suggesting a possible short-term decoupling from the AI trade, though analysts caution it may reflect a single session rather than a lasting shift.
Is Bitcoin now decoupled from tech stocks? Not confirmed. The link between crypto and the AI capital cycle is considered structural, so one resilient session is not enough to establish a durable decoupling.
Sources: CoinDesk; Benzinga. This article is informational and not financial advice; it contains no price predictions presented as fact.
