Tech slide deepens
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 15th October 2026.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
Gold, Treasuries Become Beacons In A Global Storm
An array of asset classes got thumped on Wednesday as worldwide fears about higher interest rates took hold. Gold, however, was not among the downtrodden. The yellow metal gained 1% versus a 1% loss for the S&P 500 and a 3% loss for Bitcoin.
Bond prices are up, too. Put another way: yields are falling.
The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note declined by eight basis points to 5.08%. The 10-year yield's recent peak was 5.36%.
“Treasuries and gold are often treated as haven investments,” CoinDesk noted.
What's down
AI Pullback Accelerates
A worldwide tech stock sell-off persisted in pre-market trading today with most of the big names taking their licks. Twenty of the most prized global AI/semiconductor companies have lost more than $1T worth of share value so far this week as investors become increasingly uneasy about higher borrowing costs, CNBC said.
Nvidia shed 1.8% this morning. Other names fared worse. These include AMD (-3.5%) and Micron (-4.4%). The slide began earlier in the week and became more pronounced on Wednesday after a fresh batch of inflation numbers came out. Federal Reserve policymakers fixate on the “Core CPI” index (excluding food and energy costs) which rose 0.3% in September. Most economists were expecting a rise of 0.2%. A fresh round of inflation data (the Labor Department's "producer price index," measuring wholesale costs paid by companies before passing them along to consumers) just came out today. These numbers ran hot as well.
And so markets are more anxious than ever about higher interest rates which could stifle the borrowing needed to fund the AI infrastructure buildout required by Big Tech if they expect to deliver future profits that have been baked into their share price levels. The growing public backlash against data centers is also a front-of-mind issue on Wall Street as well as on Main Street, especially with midterm elections approaching.
Tech stock tumult is global and 'tis getting more vicious by the day. Going back to last week, South Korea’s chip-heavy Kospi index has shed 20% across seven trading sessions. The Kospi tanked another 7% overnight.
What's next
DeFi 3.0 Takes Center Stage — And Not A Moment Too Soon
Bitcoin early Thursday fell to as low as $80,077 before rebounding. As of 9:45 a.m. (EST), BTC was trudging back closer to $80,600.
Ethereum, meanwhile, in just the past few hours has regained a small but prominent patch of green space. ETH, second-largest digital asset, late last night sank toward the threshold of $2,300, a level not seen in some two months. Spot ETH has since managed to sidle up closer to $2,350, per CoinGecko.
ETH’s recent high of roughly $2,800 came back on Sept. 21. Rising bond yields since then have been undercutting the attractiveness of Ethereum-run DeFi protocols historically tied to alternative yield generation strategies, CoinDesk said.
Meanwhile, the DeFi industry is championing “DeFi 3.0” which is a movement hitched to the wagon of tokenized Real World Assets (RWAs). The market for tokenized treasury bonds, for example, has reached $15B, a tiny but noteworthy slice of the overall treasury market. The Ethereum network does host a big portion of these assets, which are largely lodged in vehicles such as BlackRock's BUIDL, Circle's USYC and Ondo's OUSG/USDY.
Solana, BNB Chain and Stellar are also among the blockchain networks hosting tokenized treasuries which, unlike regular treasuries, can trade and settle around the clock.
