Does bitcoin's slide have more to do with AI than Strategy?

BTC below $70K. Strategy sold 32 BTC and sparked a $14M Polymarket fight. $3.4B in ETF outflows. AI keeps running. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ SPONSORED BY Tuesday, June 2, 2026   Bitcoin’s slide below $70,000 has more to do with AI than Strategy. Yes, Strategy sold 32 BTC for $2.5 million — its first disclosed sale — to fund preferred stock distributions, and the market noticed. But the deeper force is capital rotating out of crypto and into AI-driven equities: HYPE and NEAR were the only names rallying, AI tokens outperformed, and while the MSCI Asia-Pacific index slid 0.5% from record highs, it was tech profit-taking after a monster run rather than a risk-off event. DeFi TVL just hit a 20-month low. The ETF outflow streak hit $3.4 billion and counting. Read today’s full report → Market snapshot As of 8am EST Asset Price 24h BTC $69,363 −3.80% ETH $1,880 −3.20% SOL $79.50 −2.90% XRP $1.28 −2.60% Prices approximate. Visit coindesk.com/price for live data. A message from CME Group The cryptocurrency market never sleeps, and neither should your ability to manage your exposure and capture opportunities. With institutional and active trader interest in digital assets continuing to grow, having access to reliable, continuous trading is more critical than ever. Building on this momentum, our comprehensive suite of Cryptocurrency futures and options contracts — available in both larger and Micro sizes — allow you to trade around the clock across major digital assets. What are the key advantages of 24/7 trading? Continuous performance: Trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Proven liquidity: Join a marketplace that handled over $3T in notional volume in 2025. Regulated marketplace: Benefit from the same transparency and oversight you trust — soon available every hour and every day. Don’t just watch the market — trade its potential. Find out more CoinDesk Disclosure: The information contained in this newsletter, and any information linked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency or digital assets. L1.co Disclosure: This material is for informational purposes only, and the content contained herein should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to sell or buy any asset, strategy, or product. Investing in digital assets involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principal. What matters today Markets   Story 1 of 3 Bitcoin below $70K. The AI trade — not Strategy — is the real culprit. Bitcoin dropped below $70,000 for the first time since April 7, extending a weeklong slide even as markets paused near record highs. Strategy’s sale of 32 BTC for $2.5 million — its first disclosed sale, used to fund preferred stock distributions — weighed on sentiment, but analysts point to a bigger force: capital rotating into AI-driven equities. HYPE and NEAR were the session’s standout winners; AI tokens broadly outperformed. Meanwhile MSCI Asia-Pacific fell 0.5% as investors locked in gains from the AI rally, South Korea’s Kospi slid 1.8% after a 105% year-to-date run, and Nasdaq futures slipped 0.7%. Brent held near $94.40 on the unresolved Hormuz stalemate. DeFi TVL hit a 20-month low as the Kelp hack fallout continues to drain deposits across lending protocols. Read more → Markets   Story 2 of 3 Strategy sold BTC in May. Disclosed it in June. Now Polymarket bettors are fighting over when it counts. Strategy’s sale of 32 BTC for $2.5 million was executed in late May to fund quarterly distributions on its Series A preferred stock — but disclosed via SEC filing in June. That gap created a $14 million Polymarket prediction market asking whether the sale “counts” as occurring in May or June, with bettors split on whether the transaction date or the disclosure date governs resolution. The sale itself is commercially tiny — 32 BTC represents 0.004% of Strategy’s 818,000+ BTC holdings — but its symbolic weight as the company’s first publicly disclosed bitcoin sell is disproportionate. Saylor’s public statement that the sale was a routine treasury management action tied to preferred distributions has done little to quell the narrative that the world’s most prominent corporate bitcoin buyer is now also a seller. Read more → Markets   Story 3 of 3 Bitcoin’s biggest ETF selloff yet: $3.4B drained. AI stocks keep climbing. The U.S. spot bitcoin ETF outflow streak now stands at $3.4 billion — the largest cumulative drawdown since the products launched in January 2024 — with the eleventh consecutive session of net outflows recorded. Total net assets across U.S. BTC ETFs have fallen from $104.29 billion on May 15 to under $92 billion. ETH ETFs are simultaneously running a 15-session outflow streak. The contrast with equities is stark: Nvidia, SoftBank, and Taiwan Semiconductor have continued to set records on the AI trade even as crypto bleeds. Tencent jumped 7.5% Tuesday as Chinese tech bucked the broader pullback. The divergence mirrors the BTC/IGV disconnect flagged on Monday — capital that once treated crypto as a high-beta tech proxy is now finding more direct AI exposure in equities, and the exit from ETF wrappers is the clearest signal of that rotation in progress. Read more → CoinDesk Disclosure: The information contained in this newsletter, and any information linked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency or digital assets. L1.co Disclosure: This material is for informational purposes only, and the content contained herein should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to sell or buy any asset, strategy, or product. Investing in digital assets involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principal. Crypto Daybook Americas: A newsletter from CoinDesk Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here.  Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.  CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10011, USA Unsubscribe Manage preferences

Software stocks broke from bitcoin — what's next?

BTC fell 10% while IGV gained 12%. $2.97B in record ETF outflows. Wall Street hit new highs on the AI trade. Cardano’s Summit is cancelled. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ SPONSORED BY Monday, June 1, 2026   Software stocks broke from bitcoin — and the divergence may be a signal. IGV rallied 36% since April 10 while BTC fell 10% over the same stretch. The 20-day correlation between the two has dropped to 0.58, its lowest since before the major rallies of late 2023 and mid-2024. Each time it got this low before, bitcoin significantly outperformed in the months that followed. Meanwhile, spot BTC ETFs just logged a record 10-session, $2.97 billion outflow streak — the longest on record — even as Wall Street ripped to new highs on the Nvidia and SoftBank AI trade. Read today’s full report → Market snapshot As of 8am EST Asset Price 24h BTC $72,527 −1.80% ETH $1,996 −2.10% SOL $81.89 −1.40% XRP $1.32 −1.60% Prices approximate. Visit coindesk.com/price for live data. A message from CME Group The cryptocurrency market never sleeps, and neither should your ability to manage your exposure and capture opportunities. With institutional and active trader interest in digital assets continuing to grow, having access to reliable, continuous trading is more critical than ever. Building on this momentum, our comprehensive suite of Cryptocurrency futures and options contracts — available in both larger and Micro sizes — allow you to trade around the clock across major digital assets. What are the key advantages of 24/7 trading? Continuous performance: Trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Proven liquidity: Join a marketplace that handled over $3T in notional volume in 2025. Regulated marketplace: Benefit from the same transparency and oversight you trust — soon available every hour and every day. Don’t just watch the market — trade its potential. Find out more CoinDesk Disclosure: The information contained in this newsletter, and any information linked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency or digital assets. L1.co Disclosure: This material is for informational purposes only, and the content contained herein should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to sell or buy any asset, strategy, or product. Investing in digital assets involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principal. What matters today Markets   Story 1 of 3 Software stocks broke from bitcoin. This divergence has historically preceded a major BTC outperformance. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) has surged 36% since April 10, reclaiming its 200-day moving average — a return to long-term uptrend driven by AI tailwinds washing away the “SaaS apocalypse” narrative that hit MSFT, ORCL, and PLTR earlier this year. Bitcoin moved in nearly the opposite direction over the same period, falling roughly 10% since May 14 while IGV gained 12% — one of the largest disconnects between the two assets in recent years. But here’s the signal: bitcoin’s 20-day rolling correlation with IGV has dropped to 0.58, its lowest reading since late 2023 and mid-2024. In both prior instances, bitcoin significantly outperformed software stocks in the months that followed the low-correlation episode. Read more → Markets   Story 2 of 3 Record $2.97B in BTC ETF outflows over 10 sessions. Wall Street hit new highs on the AI trade. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs logged their tenth consecutive day of outflows on Friday — the longest streak on record, surpassing the previous eight-session run from early 2025 — with $2.97 billion drained between May 15 and May 29 per SoSoValue. The single largest day was May 27, with $733 million exiting in 24 hours, the biggest single-day outflow since January. Total net assets across U.S. BTC ETFs fell from $104.29 billion on May 15 to $94.17 billion by Friday. ETH ETFs are running an even longer 14-session outflow streak, draining roughly $2.6 billion. All of this happened while Wall Street ripped: the MSCI All Country World Index set a record, Asian equities advanced 1.1% to an all-time high, Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.6% on Nvidia’s laptop-market push, and SoftBank surged 11% on its OpenAI and Arm holdings. Oil complicated the picture, with Brent back above $93 on stalled Hormuz reopening efforts. Read more → Governance   Story 3 of 3 Cardano’s governance vote cancelled the 2026 Summit. Smaller TOKEN2049 plan approved. The Cardano Foundation’s treasury proposal for the 2026 Cardano Summit in Singapore failed to clear the required two-thirds supermajority, finishing at 65.21% approval — 1.46 percentage points short. The ask had already been trimmed by 22% to 7.8 million ADA (~$1.83M) from an original 14.07 million ADA, with milestone-gated payments and an oversight committee added. Even public endorsements from Charles Hoskinson and Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard couldn’t swing enough DReps. A separate EMURGO proposal for a Cardano pavilion at TOKEN2049 Singapore — requesting 3.3 million ADA (~$793K) — passed separately. The outcome is the second major Cardano governance rejection this year, following a 32.9 million ADA research proposal that also failed, and marks one of the most visible tests of the Voltaire-era governance framework. Read more → CoinDesk Disclosure: The information contained in this newsletter, and any information linked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency or digital assets. L1.co Disclosure: This material is for informational purposes only, and the content contained herein should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to sell or buy any asset, strategy, or product. Investing in digital assets involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principal. Crypto Daybook Americas: A newsletter from CoinDesk Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here.  Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.  CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10011, USA Unsubscribe Manage preferences