The three major U.S. stock indices hit new highs, but crypto-related stocks collectively declined: signs of decoupling fully emerge

In the late May 2026 period, the U.S. stock market saw a strong upward rally. By the close on May 28 local time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 50,668.97 points, the Nasdaq Composite closed at 26,917.47 points, and the S&P 500 closed at 7,563.63 points, with all three indices hitting new all-time closing highs at the same time. Among them, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had already been setting records for several consecutive trading days prior, and heavyweight tech stocks continued to lead the broader market under the boost of the AI boom.

However, in sharp contrast to the strong performance of traditional stock indexes, crypto-related concept stocks generally closed lower over the same period. On May 27, after the U.S. Senate Banking Committee passed the CLARITY Act with a bipartisan vote of 15–9, market expectations of a clearer regulatory framework for crypto assets warmed up further, but this news failed to reverse the weak trend in crypto concept stocks. Strategy (MSTR) shares fell despite an overall strengthening of the broader market, and stocks including MARA Holdings, BMNR, and Circle all declined by more than 4%.

The divergence between crypto concept stocks and the Nasdaq index had already begun to show earlier. Since Bitcoin’s recent high of 82,500 USD on May 6, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have remained near historical highs. By May 28, Bitcoin had fallen further below the 73,000 USD level, deepening the decoupling from the record-setting stock market.

Is the AI boom siphoning risk capital, causing a liquidity “siphon effect” in the crypto market?

The core driving force behind this Nasdaq uptrend is real earnings growth from AI computing power and the semiconductor sector. Leading technology companies have managed to balance cost reductions and efficiency improvements with capital expenditures. Incremental capital mainly comes from index allocations and corporate share buybacks, rather than a broad-based expansion of risk appetite.

For the past six months, AI has become a “vacuum cleaner” for global capital. U.S. AI giants not only have complete industry narratives, but also verifiable financial profits to back them up—chip orders, data center contracts, and AI server shipment volumes create a quantifiable path for performance realization. According to publicly available market data, Dell Technologies, an AI server manufacturer, surged nearly 38% after releasing its earnings report. Its adjusted operating profit for the first quarter reached 4.24 billion USD, significantly exceeding market expectations.

By comparison, the crypto market has been stuck in a narrative vacuum over the past six months. High-performance public chains that were highly sought after in the previous cycle are now generally facing declining ecosystem activity. In the absence of new large-scale application scenarios and inflows of incremental capital, existing funds are forced to make trade-offs between the “AI narrative” and the “crypto narrative.” A large portion of risk capital that was originally allocated to the crypto market chose to take profits at high levels and reallocate into AI-driven technology stock sectors.

Coinbase and Strategy fall very differently—what does the divergence in crypto stocks reveal about pricing logic?

Against the backdrop of overall weakness in crypto concept stocks, companies with different business models show clear divergence. Based on public market data from May 27, Strategy (MSTR) had relatively limited intraday volatility, while Coinbase (COIN) fell 2.69% and Circle (CRCL) dropped sharply by 7.92%—three stocks produced three distinctly different price trajectories on the same trading day.

Behind this divergence is the fact that the cross-market pricing logic in the crypto industry is being profoundly rebuilt. Strategy is essentially a publicly listed company that holds Bitcoin as its core asset, and there is a close linkage between its share price and Bitcoin spot prices. As of May 25, 2026, Strategy held 843,738 BTC, with a market capitalization of about 65.25 billion USD and a total purchase cost of about 63.9 billion USD. Its average holding cost was about 75,700 USD. The stock’s volatility is far higher than that of Bitcoin itself, with a beta coefficient of about 3.57. This high-elasticity pricing mechanism exposes the stock to significant downside risk even during periods when Bitcoin is consolidating.

Coinbase’s pricing logic, on the other hand, more directly reflects market expectations for the trading activity of crypto assets and the demand for platform services. Compared with its May 27 closing price of 173.78 USD, Coinbase’s share price rebounded during intraday trading on May 29 to 182.29 USD, up 4.9%. However, over a longer period, the stock has recorded a -29.66% move over the past year, with a trading range of 139.36 USD to 444.65 USD, indicating substantial disagreement in the market about the sustainability of crypto exchanges’ profit models.

Bitcoin’s trading range tightens—where does the “nonlinear amplification effect” in crypto concept stocks come from?

Bitcoin fell from the 82,500 USD level to the 76,000 USD range, for an overall decline of about 7%. This is a typical range-bound fluctuation and far from a trend-like selloff. Yet crypto concept stocks reacted with far greater magnitude than Bitcoin itself. Behind this phenomenon lies a significant “nonlinear amplification effect.”

On the one hand, mining companies’ balance sheets are being squeezed from two directions at once: high-intensity capital expenditures and asset value shrinkage. According to publicly disclosed data, MARA Holdings reported a net loss of 1.26 billion USD in the first quarter. The company also stated clearly that for each 10,000 USD change in the market price of Bitcoin, its first-quarter pre-tax loss would change accordingly by about 353 million USD. This high-leverage financial structure makes mining companies’ share prices extremely sensitive to Bitcoin price fluctuations.

On the other hand, overly high concentration of holdings amplifies the impact of market volatility. Since 2020, Strategy has shifted from a business intelligence software provider into a vehicle holding Bitcoin as its core asset. Its 843,738 BTC holdings represent about 4.02% of Bitcoin’s total supply. When Bitcoin prices weaken, the market not only prices in Bitcoin’s decline itself, but also re-evaluates the leverage risks and financing capacity of these “Bitcoin proxy”-type listed companies. This leads to stock price adjustments that exceed Bitcoin’s decline by far.

Regulatory bills pass but don’t hold up prices—what signal is the market waiting for?

In late May, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee passed the CLARITY Act with two-party votes, increasing certainty regarding the crypto asset regulatory framework. However, this positive regulatory update did not translate into price support for crypto concept stocks.

At the root of it is the fact that regulatory tailwinds have a clear lag in supporting Bitcoin prices under macro liquidity pressures. The Digital Asset Parity Act—which exempts mining and staking rewards from taxation until sale—was proposed in May, but no hearing has been scheduled yet. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is awaiting the full Senate vote, and no specific date has been set. Previously, these two bills were viewed as potential catalysts for institutional inflows, but delays in the legislative process make it difficult for the market to form clear short-term pricing expectations.

At the same time, the macro liquidity environment is also changing. Since mid-April, the Federal Reserve has decided to keep its balance sheet around 6.7 trillion USD unchanged. As a result, the liquidity tailwind that had previously supported risk assets disappeared. CME FedWatch tool data shows the market’s probability pricing for a June rate hike has risen to nearly 15%, up significantly from nearly zero a month earlier. In the U.S., the April core PCE price index rose 3.3% year over year, and inflation is still above the 2% target level. In a macro setting where liquidity tightens and inflation remains sticky, the allocation priority of crypto assets as high-beta risk assets is systematically downgraded.

Miners shift from “mining” to “hashpower leasing”—can business model iteration fight decoupling?

Facing the twin pressures of Bitcoin price oscillation and intensifying hashpower competition, some crypto concept stocks are proactively adjusting their business models. Their core direction is to shift away from single Bitcoin mining toward AI data center and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.

TeraWulf announced plans to build a 1 gigawatt AI and high-performance computing park in Kentucky—an example of the latest public miner shifting its infrastructure from Bitcoin to AI. MARA Holdings has also announced plans to acquire Long Ridge Energy & Power. The transaction includes a 505 megawatt natural gas power plant and data center park land. The company’s CEO Fred Thiel stated explicitly that “electricity is a scarce input factor in the AI field,” and set “maximizing the utilization value of every megawatt” as a strategic goal. Miners such as Hut 8 and Riot Platforms are also advancing AI computing-related layouts to varying degrees.

Galaxy Digital’s transformation path offers a clearer reference. The company has completed delivery of its first data hall to CoreWeave. A 15-year lease covers approximately 526 megawatts of critical IT load across Phase 1 and Phase 2. Management expects annual combined revenue to exceed 1 billion USD, and the EBITDA profit margin on the leasing side is about 90%. Preliminary Q2 data shows adjusted EBITDA of about 90 million USD, a substantial improvement from Q1’s -188 million USD.

The emergence of this “AI + crypto dual-track” model implies that the valuation logic of crypto concept stocks is shifting from relying solely on Bitcoin price to validating a diversified revenue structure. In a market where Bitcoin continues to trade with volatility, whether stable cash flow can be formed through AI infrastructure contract revenues will become a key variable for crypto concept stocks to navigate valuation cycles and reduce the strong coupling with Bitcoin prices.

Rate-cut expectations fade and dollar yields rise—how does this compress crypto asset allocation space?

The direction of macro monetary policy is always one of the most fundamental variables in crypto asset pricing. In May 2026, the bond market’s expectations for the Federal Reserve’s policy path changed significantly. The yield on the U.S. 30-year Treasury broke through the 5% psychological level in mid-May, rising to 5.12%, the highest since 2007; the 10-year Treasury yield also rose to 4.63%.

With the yield curve moving upward, crypto asset pricing structures face dual pressure. On one hand, higher risk-free interest rates raise the relative opportunity cost of holding zero-cash-flow assets—Bitcoin does not generate cash flows. In an environment where bond yields rise, its appeal as a store-of-value instrument declines. On the other hand, in risk asset pricing models, the discount factor increases as interest rates rise, reducing the discounted proportion of crypto assets’ forward value at current prices, thereby exerting downward pressure on valuations.

Policy expectations also show subtle changes. In April, the U.S. non-farm payroll added 253,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate remained at a low 3.4%. A strong labor market provides a fundamental basis for the Fed to maintain a relatively tight policy stance. By September, rate cuts remain a more likely scenario, but the marginal increase in the probability of rate hikes indicates that market confidence in “inflation cooling” is less certain than at the beginning of the year. Under this environment of macro uncertainty, the function of crypto assets as a liquidity barometer is further amplified—liquidity contraction transmits first to high-beta assets. The earlier pullback in crypto concept stocks precisely reflects this logic.

From “Bitcoin proxy” to “industry validation”—can crypto concept stocks break out of an independent narrative?

In summary, the divergence in performance between the three major U.S. stock indexes and crypto concept stocks is not an accidental outcome of short-term sentiment fluctuations. It is the inevitable result of multiple structural factors working together.

First, structural shifts in capital allocation are ongoing. In the face of high-profit expectations created by the AI boom, the crypto market lacks an equally convincing industry narrative as a capital-absorbing carrier. The “earning effect” of traditional stock indexes has attracted some risk capital that had previously been stationed in the crypto market. Second, although regulatory certainty has advanced at the policy level, delays in the legislative process combined with macro liquidity pressures make it difficult for crypto concept stocks to obtain independent valuation support in the short term. Third, the crypto concept stocks’ own business models are in a transformation window—from purely “Bitcoin proxy”-type assets toward diversified revenue structures. This process naturally involves rebuilding valuation centers and increasing volatility.

Key variables to continue monitoring include: the actual path of Fed monetary policy and its transmission effect on risk asset pricing; whether AI computing demand can continuously provide stable cash flow verification for crypto concept stocks undergoing transition; and whether the legislative pace of U.S. digital asset regulatory bills can provide an institutional foundation for systemic allocation of capital.

For participants in the crypto market, understanding the essence of decoupling—namely that crypto assets are evolving from traditional finance’s “price-linked assets” into an independent asset class driven by their own supply-demand dynamics and narrative drivers—may have greater long-term value than focusing solely on short-term price movements.

FAQ

Q1: The three major U.S. stock indexes set new highs, but crypto concept stocks fall. Is this a short-term abnormality or a signal of a long-term trend?

Judging from the current macro and industry environment, this is more likely the beginning of a structural trend rather than a short-term anomaly. The AI boom’s siphoning effect on risk capital, the Fed’s relatively tight monetary environment, and the crypto market’s narrative vacuum together place crypto concept stocks at a relative disadvantage in terms of capital preferences. Historically, asset class rotation often unfolds over quarters or even years.

Q2: How large is Strategy’s (formerly MicroStrategy) holding size? Why is its stock price volatility more severe than Bitcoin’s?

As of May 25, 2026, Strategy held 843,738 BTC, representing about 4.02% of Bitcoin’s total supply, with a market capitalization of about 65.25 billion USD and a total purchase cost of about 63.9 billion USD. Its stock’s beta coefficient is about 3.57, meaning its volatility is far higher than the market average. The main reasons are: its core assets are highly concentrated in a single crypto asset, and the company leverages its positioning through instruments such as issuing convertible bonds and preferred shares—this financial structure amplifies price swings.

Q3: What key indicators should be watched for the future of crypto concept stocks?

Key indicators to focus on include: (1) the actual path of Federal Reserve interest rates and changes in balance sheet policy; (2) the legislative progress of U.S. digital asset regulatory bills (such as the CLARITY Act and the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act); (3) contract revenue validation from crypto concept stocks’ own transition to AI and high-performance computing—such as data center lease arrangements involving Galaxy Digital and CoreWeave; and (4) the trend of net inflows/outflows for U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs.

Q4: Is it possible for the crypto market and U.S. stocks to return to synchronized movement again?

It’s possible, but it would likely require certain conditions to be met. If the Federal Reserve policy turns into a clearly defined easing cycle and macro liquidity improves significantly, while the crypto market experiences widely impactful application-layer breakthroughs or the regulatory environment becomes meaningfully clearer, then the “capital preference spread” between the two asset classes may converge. Until then, the pattern of structural divergence is likely to persist.