South Korea's Kospi triggered a market-wide circuit breaker for the second consecutive session, hitting an intraday low of 5,532.33 — the first back-to-back halt in Korean market history. Bitcoin climbed about 1% above $64,000 through the same stretch, the second time in seven days crypto held its ground during a sharp unwind in AI-linked equities.
Bitcoin climbed about 1% above $64,000 on Wednesday while the Korea Exchange froze trading on both the Kospi and the smaller Kosdaq for 20 minutes. The halt was the first time in Korean market history the benchmark had triggered circuit breakers on consecutive trading days.
Korea's chip rout deepens
Kosdaq tripped its halt first, falling 56.85 points, or 8.05%, to 649.00 at 12:19 p.m. local time. The Kospi followed 13 minutes later, sliding 491.33 points, or 8.15%, from Tuesday's 6,023.66 close to hit 5,532.33 at 12:32 p.m.
That rout followed Tuesday's eighth circuit breaker of the year, when the Kospi plunged 8.02% intraday and closed down 10.8% after news that a Chinese company had begun mass production of a homegrown deep ultraviolet chipmaking tool. Local reporting attributed Wednesday's extension of the selloff to continued weakness in large semiconductor stocks, heavy foreign selling, and lingering concern over supply-and-demand pressure from single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds.
SK Hynix beats on profit and still falls
The selloff deepened even as SK Hynix reported blowout earnings. Its shares fell sharply Wednesday despite a 557% jump in quarterly profit, a result that still missed the elevated expectations investors had built into the stock after months of AI-driven memory-chip demand.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix remain the two most heavily weighted stocks on the index, meaning one more leg down in chip shares could trigger another circuit breaker before Korean markets stabilize.
Bitcoin breaks from the pattern
Bitcoin had tracked Korea's selloff closely on Tuesday, sliding about 2.7% to roughly $63,000 as the Kospi's initial crash coincided with rising Federal Reserve rate-hike odds and a stalling CLARITY Act to help drive a wave of crypto liquidations. Over the last 24 hours, however, the asset climbed above $64,400 even as Korea's second straight circuit breaker played out.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled the CLARITY Act would not clear the chamber before its August recess. The pattern of the past week suggests Bitcoin's tight correlation with semiconductor and AI stocks may be loosening, though analysts have generally described Kospi swings and Bitcoin moves as correlated through a shared investor base rather than causally linked.
FxPro's analyst team notes crypto market capitalization fell towards $2.14T on Tuesday, a level where it has repeatedly found support over the past three weeks, leaving the market above its 50-day moving average. The same team flagged Wednesday's Federal Reserve rate decision and commentary as the risk that could turn the equity selloff into a broad flight from risk — a shift cryptocurrencies would struggle to hold their ground through.
Sources: Bitcoin News, ActionForex
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