Bitcoin defies $800 million crypto wipeout as South Korea’s AI stock market crashes

Bitcoin rebounded above $83,000 on Tuesday despite a sharp Asian stock selloff, as cryptocurrency liquidations exceeded $800 million.

BTC recovered after briefly slipping below $81,000, while semiconductor shares continued a deepening rout that sent South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index down 6%.

Reports noted that South Korea's KOSPI plunged up to 7.4% before recovering some losses to close at 6,035.35. The decline briefly pushed the index below 6,000 and triggered a sell-side trading curb as the country's largest semiconductor manufacturers extended their losses.

Samsung Electronics fell 7.39%, while SK Hynix declined 10.09%, marking a fifth consecutive session of losses for both companies.

Together, the two memory-chip manufacturers account for approximately half of the KOSPI's market capitalization, leaving the broader index particularly sensitive to changes in the outlook for AI infrastructure spending.

Foreign investors sold approximately 4.5 trillion won ($3.35 billion) of Korean equities during Tuesday's session, extending a series of withdrawals that have weighed heavily on the country's technology sector.

Investment research firm Paradis Labs said the decline reflected a sustained retreat by foreign institutions from Samsung and SK Hynix.

The firm characterized the prevailing institutional strategy as “Sell Korea, Buy US,” while noting that domestic investors had largely remained patient, with some capital rotating from memory-chip manufacturers into financial stocks.

Paradis Labs also said the deterioration had been building for several sessions, pointing out that recent comments from Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan had intensified an existing selloff.

Tan compared speculative AI investment to gambling, adding to concerns that the industry's enormous capital commitments might not generate sufficient returns.

Those remarks coincided with a technological announcement from China's ChangXin Memory Technologies, which said it had developed a DRAM architecture capable of reducing memory-cell area by approximately 30%.

The company plans to introduce products incorporating the technology by the end of 2026, raising concerns about potential competition for South Korean memory producers. Its ability to manufacture the technology commercially at scale remains unproven.