Winklevoss declares AI trade over as Kospi crashes 11%, Bitcoin rotates

Cameron Winklevoss declared the AI trade cycle finished on Tuesday, urging investors to rotate capital into Bitcoin and Zcash as Asian semiconductor stocks crashed.

Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss declared the AI trade finished on Tuesday, urging investors to rotate into Bitcoin and Zcash as South Korea's Kospi index crashed 10.84%, its worst session since the 2020 pandemic selloff.

"The same dollar gets counted as revenue three times on its way around the loop. This is not demand. It's an accounting trick wearing a growth story as a costume," Nigel Green, chief executive officer at deVere Group, said, referring to circular financing between Nvidia, OpenAI and Oracle.

The Kospi closed at 6,023.66 after a circuit breaker halted trading for 20 minutes. Samsung Electronics fell 13.4%, and SK Hynix dropped 14.7%. Japan's Nikkei 225 lost about 4%, with Tokyo Electron shedding 10.96% and memory maker Kioxia falling more than 18%. Two China-specific catalysts drove the selloff: Changxin Memory Technologies closed its Shanghai STAR Market debut up 466%, valuing it near 3.3 trillion yuan, and reports emerged that a Chinese state-backed firm has begun producing immersion DUV lithography machines.

The rotation out of AI infrastructure into crypto assets reflects growing concern that the $5 trillion semiconductor rally has priced in demand that may not materialize. Bitcoin was testing support near $60,000, while Zcash traded at $463, down 8% on the day, as its Ironwood upgrade sealed a $1.7 billion shielded pool that held a previously undisclosed counterfeiting bug for four years.

Zcash Ironwood Upgrade Seals $1.7B Pool

Zcash activated its Ironwood upgrade at block 3,428,143 on Tuesday, sealing the Orchard shielded pool that held about 3.66 million ZEC, worth roughly $1.7 billion. The upgrade retires Orchard, where a counterfeiting bug sat undetected for four years since its launch in May 2022.

A turnstile mechanism at the pool's boundary caps total withdrawals at the amount verifiably deposited, meaning any counterfeit coins sitting inside are stuck. As of press time, 1,500 ZEC had moved into the new pool, according to a tracker.

Ironwood also introduces quantum-resilient record-keeping and formally verified proof circuits designed to prevent the class of bug that broke Orchard. ZEC traded near $463 ahead of the switch, down 8% on the day and 15% over the week, though it remains up roughly tenfold over the past year.

Circular Financing Figures Under Scrutiny

Green's argument centers on who pays whom. Nvidia funds OpenAI. OpenAI buys cloud capacity from Oracle. Oracle then purchases Nvidia chips with the revenue. However, three of Green's supporting figures do not survive a check against primary filings. Nvidia's market capitalization was roughly $5 trillion, not $4.5 trillion as Green claimed. The Nvidia-OpenAI partnership was a non-binding letter of intent later restructured to a $30 billion equity stake, not a $100 billion commitment. Oracle's remaining performance obligations stood at $638 billion, up 363% year over year.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.