Bitcoin on Wednesday climbed back above $95,000, recovering slightly from a pullback this week that knocked it from record levels.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 5% at $95,886.00, according to Coin Metrics, while ether jumped more than 7% to $3,555.82. The broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, gained 5%.
Although bitcoin is widely viewed as a store of value and a digital alternative to gold, the cryptocurrency often trades in tandem with the stock market. On Wednesday, however, it decoupled with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which was lower by 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 dropped as well.
Coinbase was up more than 2% as bitcoin lifted it along with other crypto stocks. Robinhood – which offers crypto trading and is viewed as a beneficiary of a more crypto-friendly environment in the incoming Trump administration, gained 4%. MicroStrategy, which trades as a proxy for bitcoin, advanced 7%.
Bitcoin has been regularly hitting records since the Nov. 5 election, up about 38% in that time. On Friday, it rose as high as $99,849.99 before testing the $90,000 support level this week.
“The bitcoin bull market has legs,” Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital, said in a report Wednesday. “There will be corrections and hiccups, which is normal. There could even some twilight regulatory or law enforcement actions from the outgoing Biden administration that jitter markets. But a combination of increasing institutional, corporate, and potentially nation-state adoption, a new U.S. administration that is shaping up to be extremely pro-bitcoin, and solid positioning and network data all point to higher over the near and medium term.”
Fairlead Strategies’ Katie Stockton told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday that, at current levels, bitcoin investors are in “unchartered territory in terms of where there’s resistance – which, of course, there is none.” Meanwhile, support is around $74,000. Bitcoin reached $92,000 for the first time ever just two weeks ago, on Nov. 13.
“Bitcoin does tend to stair step both to the downside and to the upside, meaning that it sees these very sharp run ups and then consolidates,” she said. “People should … be willing to give bitcoin, and the cryptocurrencies in general, more room — because of the volatility there and also because of the long-term potential.”
Bitcoin is up 124% for the year and is still widely expected to reach the $100,000 milestone before the year is over. Ether, the outperformer since the election, is trailing bitcoin on a year-to-date basis with a 55% gain.
A SpaceX Starship is seen in Boca Chica, Texas in 2023.
Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
A SpaceX Starship rocket on Wednesday exploded at the Starbase facility in Texas during routine testing in preparation for a launch flight, according to local authorities and live stream footage.
The rocket “experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase” at 11 p.m. local time, SpaceX said on social media, noting “a safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for.”
Local authorities said that Starship “suffered a catastrophic failure and exploded,” with no injuries reported at the time of writing and an investigation is now underway. Live stream footage of Starbase showed the rocket burst into flame, shooting a large fireball into the sky.
Another Starship launch was expected to take place by the end of this month.
It’s been a tempestuous ride for Elon Musk’s mammoth Starship, after three flight launch attempts devolved in fiery glory and air-traffic stopping debris this year to date. Notably, the rocket model has taken off successfully in previous instances, but its vast scale — standing 120 meters (394 feet) tall when factoring in the Super Heavy booster — has raised concerns over its overall reliability and requirements for orbital refueling once in flight.
Yet Musk has clinched his hopes on Starship as the key vehicle for both NASA’s third and fourth Artemis missions — part of a broader plan to return humans to the Moon — due to take place over 2027-2028. The rocket is also set to play a role in launching the Starlab private space station in the transition to commercial space orbiting labs once the International Space Station retires after 2030.
Critically, Starship is also central to Musk’s — and former ally U.S. President Donald Trump’s — broader ambitions to colonize Mars. The rocket is set to ferry Optimus robots to the red planet by the end of 2026, with Musk in March saying, “If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”
People look at iPhones at the Apple Fifth Avenue store in New York City on May 23, 2025.
Adam Gray | Reuters
Apple has plans to make a folding iPhone starting next year, reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said on Wednesday.
Kuo said Apple’s folding phone could have a display made by Samsung Display, which is planning to produce as many as eight million foldable panels for the device next year. However, other components haven’t been finalized, including the device’s hinge, Kuo wrote. He expects it to have “premium pricing.”
Kuo is an analyst for TF International Securities, and focuses on the Asian electronics supply chain and often discusses Apple products before they’re launched.
He wrote in a post on social media site X that Apple’s plans for the foldable iPhone aren’t locked in yet and are subject to change. Apple did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Apple’s iPhone makes up over half of Apple’s business and remains an incredibly profitable product, accounting for $201 billion in sales in the company’s fiscal 2024. But iPhone revenue peaked in 2022, and Apple is constantly looking for ways to attract new customers and convince its current customers to upgrade to more expensive devices.
The Flex S is another concept device Samsung showed off at MWC. It folds in a more zigzag-like way to make an “S” shape.
Ryan Browne | CNBC
Several of Apple’s rivals, including Huawei and Samsung, have been releasing folding smartphones since 2019.
The devices promise the screen size of a tablet in a format that can be stored in pants pockets. But folding phones still have hardware issues, including creases in the display where it is folded.
Folding phones also have yet to prove they drive significant demand after the novelty wears off.
Research firm TrendForce said last year that only 1.5% of all smartphones sold can fold. Counterpoint, another research firm tracking smartphone sales, said earlier this year that the folding market only grew about 3% in 2024 and is expected to shrink in 2025.
FILE PHOTO: Jason Droege speaks at the WSJTECH live conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S. October 22, 2019.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Scale AI’s Interim CEO Jason Droege said in a memo on Wednesday that the artificial intelligence startup is not changing course following Meta’s multibillion-dollar investment in the company last week.
“Unlike some other recent tech deals you might have heard about in the AI space, this is not a pivot or a winding down,” Droege wrote in a post directed at customers, employees and investors.
Meta has a 49% stake in Scale after its $14.3 billion investment, though the social media company will not have any voting power. Scale AI’s founder Alexandr Wang, along with a small number of other Scale employees, will join Meta as part of the agreement.
“Scale remains, unequivocally, an independent company,” Droege wrote. “This deal rewards many of the people who helped build Scale into what it is today, but more importantly to me, it’s also a validation of the course we’re on.”
Scale AI appointed Droege, the company’s chief strategy officer, to serve as its interim chief executive following the deal. Droege wrote that Scale AI is still “a well-resourced company” that has “multiple promising lines of business.”
Founded in 2016, Scale AI rose to prominence by helping major tech companies like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft prepare data they use to train cutting-edge AI models. Meta has been one of Scale AI’s biggest customers.
Droege said the company is “not slowing down” and remains committed to its data and application business units. Scale will also continue to be model agnostic, he added.
“The need for high-quality data for AI models remains significant, and with the largest network of experts training AI, we are set up well to help model builders keep pushing the frontier of what’s possible,” Droege wrote.
But some of Scale AI’s tech customers may be having doubts.
OpenAI confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday that it has been wrapping up its work with Scale AI over the past six to 12 months. The company said it’s looking to work with other data providers that have kept pace with innovation, and that its decision to wind down its work with Scale wasn’t influenced by the Meta partnership.
Google is also reportedly cutting ties with Scale following the company’s deal with Meta, according to a report from Reuters. Google declined to comment.