SK Hynix has become the dominant supplier of those chips, a position that made it South Korea’s most valuable listed company this month, surpassing Samsung for the first time in 25 years. The two companies together supply most of HBM in the world and have closed supply agreements with Nvidia and OpenAI.
This expense is a headwind for cryptocurrencies because it is the same capital cycle that has competed with digital assets for investors’ money all year. Cryptocurrencies fell for much of the month, even on days when AI chip stocks rallied — the divergence suggests how investors view the two classes.
CF Benchmarks’ Gabe Selby said much of the new money and attention has been focused on AI games, leaving cryptocurrencies fighting for a smaller share of overall risk appetite.
The churn has appeared in places that used to feed crypto directly.
When gold, silver and bitcoin sold together in recent weeks as a hedge trade unraveled, the cash flowing out of those hard assets moved into AI stocks instead of bitcoin.
Even bitcoin miners have been redirecting computing power toward AI hosting, where contracted payments outpace swings in mining revenue.
South Korea’s $518 billion commitment is a decade-long bet that AI infrastructure spending is structural and not a passing boom. Cryptocurrencies have spent the year on the other side of that flow, and the open question now is whether the money chasing AI chips and lists finally returns or stays.
