Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss declared the AI trade over on Tuesday, urging investors to rotate into Bitcoin (BTC) and Zcash (ZEC). According to reports from CoinDesk, this call came as South Korea's Kospi index closed down 10.84%, with the index finishing at 6,023.66 after a circuit breaker halted trading for 20 minutes. Winklevoss' Zcash position is not new, as he argued in April that investors bullish on AI and quantum computing should also be bullish on the privacy coin. His Zcash position remains up roughly 1,033% over the past year, with the Ironwood network upgrade going live Tuesday. However, recent market data shows Zcash's price has decreased by 4.28% in the past 24 hours and fallen by 12.01% in the past week, currently trading at £353.12 per ZEC with a total market cap of £5,938,352,542.04. The cryptocurrency is currently valued at 92.10% below its all-time high of £4,470.80, representing the highest price paid for Zcash since its launch.
The Kospi's decline was primarily driven by semiconductor stocks, with Samsung Electronics falling 13.4% and SK Hynix dropping 14.7%. As reported by CoinDesk, Japan's Nikkei 225 lost about 4%, with Tokyo Electron shedding 10.96% and memory maker Kioxia falling more than 18%. The crash was triggered by two China-specific catalysts: Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), the Hefei-based DRAM maker, closed its Shanghai STAR Market debut on Monday up 466%, valuing the company near 3.3 trillion yuan and making it the most valuable mainland-listed company. Additionally, reports indicated a Chinese state-backed firm has begun producing immersion deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, which is the bottleneck tool that Western export controls were designed to withhold.
deVere Group CEO Nigel Green blames circular financing between Nvidia, OpenAI and Oracle for the AI trade selloff. According to CoinDesk, Green's argument centers on who pays whom, stating that "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." However, fact-checking reveals several discrepancies in Green's claims. Nvidia is valued at roughly $5 trillion, not $4.5 trillion, and shares fell 5% to $195.44 on July 27. The Nvidia-OpenAI partnership is a non-binding letter of intent, later restructured to a $30 billion equity stake, not the $100 billion commitment Green cited. Additionally, Oracle's backlog is $638 billion in remaining performance obligations, up 363% year over year, not the $500 billion figure Green mentioned.
Social media sentiment shows mixed reactions to Zcash, with Twitter data revealing 38.96% bullish sentiment compared to 10.83% bearish sentiment, while 61.04% of tweets remain neutral based on 1,300 tweets. On Reddit, Zcash was mentioned in 16 posts with 161 comments, showing less upvotes compared to downvotes on posts but more upvotes compared to downvotes on comments. The cryptocurrency currently has a 24-hour trading volume of £263.17M with a circulating supply of 16,793,628.666 ZEC. Market analysts continue to debate the AI trade's trajectory, with Peter Schiff treating the drawdown as confirmation while UBS disagrees with the peak thesis, suggesting the trade is maturing rather than breaking.
