A representations of virtual currency Bitcoin is seen in front of a stock graph in this illustration taken May 19, 2021.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Cryptocurrencies were under pressure Thursday as investors grappled with renewed concerns about the U.S. economy.
Bitcoin was last lower by about 2% at $28,506.00, according to Coin Metrics. The slide began after the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s July policy meeting were released. Late Wednesday bitcoin dropped as low as $28.335.42, its weakest since late June.
The central bank minutes from the July meeting cautioned that Fed officials see “upside risks” to inflation that could potentially lead to more rate hikes. At that meeting, Fed raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in more than 22 years. Markets have been betting the central bank wouldn’t make any more moves on interest rates this year. In reaction, the stock market fell for a second straight day Wednesday and the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield hit its highest close since 2008.
Bitcoin has been trading in a tight range all summer.
Bitcoin’s correlation with stocks is at its lowest level in two years, according to Coin Metrics, but in 2022 it shot to an all-time high in response to the Fed’s rate-hiking campaign to tame inflation.
“Although inflation in itself could be an argument for growth in crypto assets, with inflation comes other aspects like risk off appetite from investors fearing a recession, and avoiding what bitcoin is deemed to be, riskier assets,” said Sylvia Jablonski, chief investment officer at Defiance ETFs. “My suspicion is that the higher beta equities and crypto are the victims of the end of summer lag, range-bound trading, no volume, which is typical in August – with the hawkish Fed as the cherry on top to keep investors to the side and prices in this tight range.”
Bitcoin and ether’s 90-day volatility dropped to multi-year lows at 35% and 37% this week, respectively, according to Kaiko.
Needham’s John Todaro added that bitcoin’s move back to $30,000 in late June “had been on light volume so that rally has not had a ton of strength.” The eventual debut of a spot bitcoin ETF, one of crypto’s biggest positive catalysts, also lost some steam this week, he added.
“With a U.S. [spot bitcoin] ETF likely not seeing a near term decision given the setback this week as well as expectations for higher rates for longer, bitcoin and crypto broadly are pulling back,” he told CNBC. “Remaining catalysts are Halving expectations in Q1-Q2 ’24 and any on-going ETF related comments from the SEC.”
Several of the top crypto assets by market cap – including ether, Binance’s BNB coin, Ripple’s XRP and the Solana and Polygon coins – were lower by more than 1% Thursday.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc., during Stanford’s 2024 Business, Government, and Society forum in Stanford, California, April 3, 2024.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Google is going to spend $10 billion more this year than it previously expected due to the growing demand for cloud services, which has created a backlog, executives said Wednesday.
As part of its second quarter earnings, the company increased its forecast for capital expenditures in 2025 to $85 billion due to “strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services” as it continues to expand infrastructure to power more AI services that use its cloud technology. That’s up from the $75 billion projection that Google provided in February, which was already above the $58.84 billion that Wall Street expected at the time.
The increased forecast comes as demand for cloud services surges across the tech industry as AI services increase in popularity. As a result, companies are doubling down on infrastructure to keep pace with demand and are planning multi‑year buildouts of data centers.
In its second quarter earnings, Google reported that cloud revenues increased by 32% to $13.6 billion in the period. The demand is so high for Google’s cloud services that it now amounts to a $106 billion backlog, Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said during the company’s post-earnings conference call.
“It’s a tight supply environment,” she said.
The vast majority of Alphabet’s capital spend was invested in technical infrastructure during the second quarter, with approximately two-thirds of investments going to servers and one-third in data center and networking equipment, Ashkenazi said.
She added that the updated outlook reflects additional investment in servers, the timing of delivery of servers and “an acceleration in the pace of data center construction, primarily to meet Cloud customer demand.”
Ashkenazi said that despite the company’s “improved” pace of getting servers up and running, investors should expect further increase in capital spend in 2026 “due to the demand as well as growth opportunities across the company.” She didn’t specify what those opportunities are but said the company will provide more details on a future earnings call.
“We’re increasing capacity with every quarter that goes by,” Ashkenazi said.
Due to the increased spend, Google will have to record more expenses over time, which will make profits look smaller, she said.
“Obviously, we’re working hard to bring more capacity online,” Ashkenazi said.
The SK Hynix Inc. logo is displayed on a glass door at the company’s office in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. SK Hynix aims to select a U.S. site for its advanced chip packaging plant and break ground there around the first quarter of next year.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
South Korea’s SK Hynix on Thursday posted record operating profit and revenuein the second quarter on sustained demand for its high bandwidth memory technology used in generative AI chipsets.
Here are SK Hynix’s second-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:
Revenue: 22.23 trillion won ($16.17 billion) vs. 20.56 trillion won
Operating profit: 9.21 trillion won vs. 9 trillion won
Revenue rose about 35% in the June quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, while operating profit rose nearly 69%, year on year.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue rose 26%, while operating profit jumped 24%.
The company said in a statement that it enjoyed strong demand and favorable pricing conditions in the first half of the year. SK Hynix added that there was a low likelihood of sharp demand corrections for the rest of 2025, due to stable customer inventory levels and expected demand from new product launches.
SK Hynix is a leading supplier of dynamic random access memory — a type of semiconductor memory commonly found in PCs, workstations and servers that is used to store data and program code.
Much of the company’s recent success can be credited to its business in high bandwidth memory, or HBM — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers.
SK Hynix has established itself as the global leader in HBM, supplying clients such as U.S. AI darling Nvidia. In the first quarter, this had seen the company overtake rival Samsung Electronics in the global DRAM market for the first time, according to Counterpoint Research.
A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month estimated that SK Hynix had tied Samsung’s combined DRAM and NAND revenues in the second quarter, with both vying for the top position in the global memory market. NAND is a type of flash memory that is commonly used in storage devices.
Samsung and US.-based memory maker Micron Technology are both seeking to catch up to SK Hynix in the HBM space. However, analysts expect SK Hynix’s dominance to persist in the short-term.
“As of now, I believe SK Hynix still holds its leadership in the HBM race … despite Samsung’s and Micron’s catch‑up efforts,” said Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group.
“I expect this edge to persist through the rest of 2025 and extend into 2026,” he added.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna appears at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 16, 2024.
Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images
IBM shares fell as much as 5% in extended trading on Wednesday after the tech conglomerate issued second-quarter results that topped Wall Street projections.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.80 adjusted vs. $2.64 expected
Revenue: $16.98 billion vs. $16.59 billion
IBM’s revenue increased nearly 8% year over year in the quarter, according to a statement. Growth in the first quarter was below 1%. Net income, which includes costs related to acquisitions, rose to $2.19 billion, or $2.31 per share, from $1.83 billion, or $1.96 per share, a year ago.
Software revenue climbed about 10% to $7.39 billion, exceeding the $7.43 billion consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount. Hybrid cloud revenue, including Red Hat, showed 16% growth. The software unit’s gross margin of 83.9% was barely narrower than StreetAccount’s 84.0% consensus.
Revenue from consulting rose almost 3% to $5.31 billion, higher than StreetAccount’s $5.16 billion consensus. Infrastructure revenue went up 14% to $4.14 billion, above the $3.75 billion StreetAccount average estimate.
During the quarter, IBM announced the next-generation z17 mainframe computer and the acquisition of data and artificial intelligence consulting firm Hakkoda.
IBM called for over $13.5 billion in 2025 free cash flow, similar to a projection from April. The company still sees at least 5% revenue growth at constant currency for the year.
As of Wednesday’s close, IBM shares were up 28% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index has gained around 8% in the same period.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
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