Bitcoin slips below $80,000 as AI fundraising draws capital; Ripple gets final nod for U.S. national trust bank

Bitcoin traded around $79,750 ahead of the U.S. stock market open, down 0.6% over 24 hours and 2.5% over the past week, according to CoinDesk. Ether and Solana posted similar declines, while XRP gained 1%.

The XRP move followed news that Ripple received a final go-ahead to launch its own U.S. national trust bank. The source gave no further details on the approval.

The softer crypto prices came as investor attention shifted toward artificial intelligence. In the past 24 hours, Meta announced a $95 billion capital raise and Anthropic filed for an IPO, with reports suggesting the company could aim to raise as much as $100 billion. Together that is close to $200 billion directed at AI rather than crypto. The Nasdaq rose more than 1% on the previous day and futures were up 0.4%, which suggests the AI trade has at least temporarily returned.

Bitcoin has weakened even though interest rates and expectations of Fed rate hikes have eased, and oil has given back some of its larger gains from earlier in the month. The Federal Reserve is due to finish a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, and markets fully expect it to leave rates unchanged.

Investor Jason Calacanis posted that a difficult year for Bitcoin was only beginning and that the price would test its $57,000 low within 12 months. He argued that capital should move from Bitcoin to AI and then voiced a bullish view on Bittensor's TAO token, citing its focus on scaling AI. TAO has fallen 25% over the past month and 38% over the past year. Commenters on his post noted that Calacanis has previously predicted Bitcoin's death more than once, at much lower prices.