In brief
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called on AI labs to deliberately slow capability gains for safety reasons; OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk both said they agree.
- Nvidia, Intel, AMD and Marvell led a chipmaker selloff Monday, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down almost 6%.
- Bitcoin climbed as high as $78,280, adding nearly 2% since midnight UTC, while gold, silver, and most AI-linked stocks fell.
The growing calls for an AI slowdown, many of which coming from within the industry itself, are sending shockwaves throughout the market, sinking AI-related stocks.
Meanwhile, crypto is so far unaffected, with Bitcoin today climbing—perhaps partly due to bullish regulatory news as the Clarity Act gets a second life.
Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy essay called “We Must Pace the Frontier,” arguing the AI industry needs to deliberately slow how fast it improves model capabilities. He pointed to two recent developments behind his shift: recursive self-improvement accelerating progress industry-wide, and an OpenAI-Hugging Face agent-swarm incident he treats as a warning sign.
Within a day, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI owner Elon Musk both said publicly that they agreed.
When markets opened Monday, Wall Street apparently read those calls as bad news for the chips that power the AI boom. Nvidia fell as much as 3% Monday, Intel dropped more than 5%, and AMD sank about 6%. Silicon chip maker Marvell Technology lost as much as 7.5%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, a widely used gauge of chip stocks, sank almost 6%.
But not everything crashed.
Bitcoin sits out the selloff
Bitcoin moved in the opposite direction. The largest cryptocurrency climbed as high as $78,280, up nearly 2% since midnight UTC and about 4.8% below this month’s $82,284 record. Ethereum added 2.1% to trade near $2,514, and XRP gained 3.3%. Overall, total crypto market capitalization grew about 1.5%.
The strength extends a pattern that’s played out for weeks. Bitcoin was knocked down to $76,877 during Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s hawkish Jackson Hole speech in late August, then bounced back above $80,000 on September 3 after Fed Governor Christopher Waller signaled he could support holding rates steady, a comment that triggered a short squeeze exceeding $415 million.
Monday’s move fits that same rhythm: rate-hike anxiety knocks Bitcoin down, and any hint of relief sends it climbing again.
Progress on U.S. crypto legislation gave sentiment an extra push. The odds of Congress passing the Clarity Act in 2026 jumped to 31% on Polymarket over the weekend after President Trump agreed to updated ethics provisions that had stalled the bill since July.
The Senate holds a cloture vote Tuesday, and with Republicans controlling 53 seats and at least two expected to vote no. Clarity Act backers likely need close to nine Democrats to reach the 60 votes required, setting up a dramatic vote that could move markets in either direction depending on the outcome.
