PrimeXBT: Why is Bitcoin lagging while the AI-driven stock rally keeps setting records?

Bitcoin was supposed to be the high-beta expression of a risk-on market. For most of the past cycle, that logic held, with crypto and tech rising and falling together as the same liquidity and the same appetite for risk moved both. That link has now snapped. The Nasdaq is printing fresh all-time highs, lifted by an artificial intelligence (AI) boom pouring money into chipmakers and data-centre operators, while Bitcoin has dropped under $70,000 and sits more than 40% below the peak it set last October. For anyone trading crypto, the more useful question is not why stocks are strong, but why Bitcoin has been left out of a rally it would normally be part of leading. The data behind the weakness The softness is visible across almost every aspect of demand. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) posted their biggest monthly outflow of the year in May. On-chain spot buying has stayed thin. Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, parted with some of its position for the first time since 2022, a notable shift from a company built around never selling. And when price gave way under $70,000, it set off the heaviest long liquidations crypto has seen all year. Taken together, the picture is one of buyers stepping back rather than leaning in. Stocks have an earnings cushion that Bitcoin does not The equity rally is narrow and almost entirely AI-led. A handful of large technology names, the chipmakers and the hyperscalers building out data centres, account for most of the gains, and combined capital spending across the biggest players looks set to climb sharply again in 2026. Crucially, the market is funding this from profits. These are cash-generative businesses, and that earnings base has let equities shrug off the oil-driven inflation and geopolitical tension weighing on other markets. Bitcoin has no such backstop. It produces no cash flow, so when the macro mood turns cautious, there is no earnings story to fall back on, only sentiment and liquidity. That difference helps explain why the two assets, normally so closely linked, are now moving in opposite directions. The AI boom may be pulling capital out of crypto There is also a more direct competition playing out, and it is clearest in the mining sector. Margins were squeezed after the 2024 halving, and a growing number of miners have responded by redirecting power, sites, and capital towards AI and high-performance computing instead of hashing Bitcoin. More than $70 billion in AI and computing contracts have now been signed across the listed miners, with operators including TeraWulf, IREN, Core Scientific, and Galaxy Digital handing large blocks of energy capacity to AI tenants on long-term deals. Funding that shift came at a cost to the network. Public miners offloaded a record amount of Bitcoin in the first quarter of 2026, more even than during the quarter of the Terra collapse in 2022, and the network hashrate fell over the period for the first time since 2020. The market has applauded the move: several miners that pivoted towards AI have seen their shares climb this year while Bitcoin has fallen. Capital that once flowed into the crypto ecosystem is now being rewarded for leaving it. Liquidity could be the bigger story Step back from the headlines, and the deeper driver may simply be liquidity. Bitcoin has long ranked among the most sensitive assets to the global liquidity cycle, often turning ahead of it. Michael Howell of CrossBorder Capital argues that the cycle peaked in 2025 and has since rolled into a downswing, the kind of backdrop in which Bitcoin tends to feel the squeeze before anything else. Benjamin Cowen of Into the Cryptoverse reaches a similar conclusion from a different direction, suggesting crypto has entered a later, more defensive stage of the cycle where rallies tend to be short-lived rather than the start of something larger. Neither view is a certainty, but both sit comfortably with what the tape is showing. Restrictive policy, high yields, and a firm dollar press hardest on a long-duration, no-yield asset like Bitcoin, while AI leaders stay insulated by the profits funding their growth. On the charts The contrast is stark technically. The Nasdaq has surged roughly 35% from its late-March low to current levels near 30,500, one of its strongest runs in recent years, holding above both the 20 and 50 EMAs with the nearest support around 29,500. Bitcoin tells the opposite story. Price broke below the 70,000 support on 2 June, triggering the year’s largest liquidation cascade, and has now fallen all the way back to test the range lows around 62,000. Price is sitting in the low 60,000s, beneath the 20 and 50 EMAs now stacked overhead in the low-to-mid 70,000s. The daily RSI is deeply oversold near 18, a level last seen during February’s sell-off near 60,000. The 70,000 mark that once acted as support has flipped to resistance, while 60,000 is the support now firmly back in focus if selling continues. Laying the two side by side