Bitcoin is showing resilience despite another steep decline in South Korean equities, where chipmakers are under pressure from mounting doubts about AI investment returns and intensifying competition from China.

The KOSPI fell 5.5% during Tuesday’s Asian trading session, leaving it roughly 38% below its record high in June. The drop underscores the widening gap between South Korean stocks and Bitcoin, which has recovered about 40% from its summer low.

Bitcoin briefly bottomed near $58,000 shortly after the KOSPI peaked, before rallying to a high of around $87,000. The cryptocurrency’s 20-day rolling correlation with the South Korean benchmark is -0.41 on the weekly chart, indicating a moderately inverse relationship.

This difference in performance suggests Bitcoin could remain relatively resilient as investors scale back positions tied to the AI boom. However, the correlation does not establish that capital withdrawn from equities is being redirected into cryptocurrency.

Pressure on chip stocks intensified after Broadcom (AVGO) CEO Hock Tan likened speculative AI investing to casino gambling, the Financial Times reported. His comments prompted renewed questions about whether AI-related revenues can justify the sector’s enormous infrastructure costs. Growing capabilities at Chinese memory-chip maker CXMT have also heightened concerns over competition and the risk of weaker profit margins, according to Bloomberg.

SK Hynix shares dropped about 10%, while Samsung Electronics declined roughly 7%. The downturn extended to U.S. premarket trading, where Micron Technology (MU) and SanDisk (SNDK) both lost around 3%.