Bitcoin traded near $63,000 on Tuesday, pulling back from a two-week high of $64,660 as a sell-off in US chip stocks dragged down the Nasdaq 100. The move put BTC's newly rebuilt link to tech
Bitcoin traded near $63,000 on Tuesday, pulling back from a two-week high of $64,660 as a sell-off in US chip stocks dragged down the Nasdaq 100. The move put BTC's newly rebuilt link to tech stocks under pressure, right as trader John Bollinger called current price action "a critical point" for the broader trend.
The setup matters because Bitcoin's relationship with equities had flipped hard in just days. Trader Daan Crypto Trades noted correlation to the Nasdaq moved from -0.87 to +0.72 within a week, turning BTC from a hedge asset into something trading more like a high-beta tech stock.
Micron Technology led the chip sell-off, falling more than 9% during the session. The drop came despite Micron posting a record fiscal third quarter, with revenue of $41.5 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $25.11, and despite management guiding to even stronger numbers ahead. The decline reflected shifting sentiment around AI infrastructure spending, not a change in Micron's own results.
This was not an isolated event. Micron shares had already fallen 13% on June 23 after South Korea's financial regulator warned about leveraged ETFs tied to memory chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix. Another sell-off hit on July 2 after cautious commentary on AI demand spread across the chip sector. Micron stock sat roughly 22% below its record high heading into Tuesday, even after gaining more than 260% since January.
The broader Nasdaq 100 fell 2.1% and the S&P 500 dropped 0.6% during Tuesday's session. Other chipmakers including SanDisk and Arm also fell over 10% in earlier rounds of this rotation, while Nvidia, Marvell, and AMD posted smaller declines. The pattern points to a market questioning whether AI-driven valuations have outrun near-term fundamentals, even as underlying chip demand for AI servers stays strong.
Adding to the day's volatility, SpaceX joined the Nasdaq 100 on Tuesday in what The Kobeissi Letter called the fastest inclusion in the index's history. The addition followed weeks of turbulence in SpaceX's own share price, which had shed over $915 billion in value from its late-June peak.
Bitcoin avoided a sharper drop despite the equity weakness, helped by a second straight day of net inflows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs, according to Farside Investors data. That inflow streak follows a rough June, when BlackRock's IBIT led ETF outflows that totaled about $4.51 billion for the month, the largest monthly outflow since the funds launched.
BTC's price path over recent weeks has been choppy. Bitcoin opened July at $57,950, its lowest level in 652 days, before recovering above $61,000 by the following week. As of Wednesday, July 8, BTC traded near $63,600, still down roughly 41% year to date and well below its October 2025 all-time high of $128,198.
Not everyone reading the charts sees the same outcome. Trader Killa pointed to prior cycles, in 2015, 2018, and 2022, where a correction in the S&P 500 preceded Bitcoin's true cycle bottom, suggesting more downside could follow the current stock weakness before BTC turns durably higher. Analyst Exitpump described a rounding topping structure on lower timeframes and expected further near-term downside.
John Bollinger, creator of the Bollinger Bands indicator, has been tracking a "W"-shaped reversal pattern on Bitcoin's daily chart for several weeks. He described Monday's price action as a test of whether that pattern would confirm.
His reasoning centers on how failed setups behave differently depending on market regime. In a bear market, bullish patterns tend to break down; in a bull market, bearish patterns break down instead. If the W pattern holds, Bollinger said he would treat it as confirmation that the trend has changed from bearish to bullish.
That reading offers a counterpoint to the historical-precedent argument from traders like Killa. Neither view is confirmed yet. Bitcoin remains range-bound between roughly $58,000 support and $65,000 resistance, with the next moves in chip stocks and Nasdaq sentiment likely to keep influencing which scenario plays out.
The core takeaway is that Bitcoin's price is currently more sensitive to Nasdaq swings than it has been in months. A chip-sector correction tied to AI valuation concerns, not crypto-specific news, is now a direct input into BTC price action. That correlation can reverse again quickly, as it did over the past week, but for now it means equity market headlines carry weight for crypto traders watching the $63,000 level.
