LONDON - Investors continued abandoning Bitcoin Friday for a new generation of disciplined, fundamentally grounded assets such as artificial-intelligence companies valued at numbers normally associated with national economies.
Bitcoin had fallen roughly a third in 2026 and was heading for its worst performance at this point in the year in at least a decade, while semiconductor shares and excitement surrounding giant IPOs such as SpaceX pulled capital toward the market's newer shiny objects.
Portfolio managers said the rotation reflects a healthy maturation of investor risk appetite away from volatile digital tokens and toward companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on chips, data centers and business models expected to become obvious later.
"Bitcoin is just too speculative now," said a fund manager while submitting an indication of interest for an unprofitable rocket company at a valuation approaching $2 trillion. "We're focused on fundamentals."
Analysts said Bitcoin's biggest problem may be that it has become familiar. It is difficult for an asset to generate true FOMO after investors have already watched it rise 100-fold, crash 80%, rise again, crash again and ruin Thanksgiving several times.
AI, by contrast, offers fresh possibilities for losing money in ways not yet emotionally priced in.
Bitcoin holders said they were unconcerned and would simply wait until investors eventually rotate out of the future and back into the previous future.
Inspired by:
Reuters - "Bitcoin's star fades, as investors flock to lustre of AI and megacap IPOs" (June 5, 2026)
