Cryptocurrency prices and equity futures retreated on Thursday morning, signaling a negative start for major indices.
Bitcoin fell 2.11% to $90,090, setting a bearish tone for digital asset miners, while a sharp decline in Oracle shares weighed heavily on the broader AI sector.
Bitcoin mining equities tracked the drop in spot cryptocurrency prices, facing widespread losses in pre-market trading.
CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) and Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) led the decline, falling 3.03% and 3.19%, respectively. MARA (NASDAQ: MARA) dropped 2.6%, while TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) and IREN (NASDAQ: IREN) posted losses of roughly 2.5% each.
Other industry participants followed the sector-wide sell-off. Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) dropped 2.38%, Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) declined 2.02%, and Americant Bitcoin (Nasdaq: ABTC) fell 1.04%.
Artificial intelligence stocks faced significant selling pressure, driven primarily by Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), which plummeted 13.18%.
A Reuters report on December 11 revealed that the sell-off came after Oracle’s quarterly cloud revenue miss, despite year-over-year growth. Compounding investor concerns, the company raised its capital expenditure outlook to $50 billion for 2026 to fund AI infrastructure, a move market observers noted would add to an existing debt load.
The negative sentiment impacted other AI leaders, with Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) falling 1.59%.
Oracle also highlighted reliance on a limited number of large partners, such as OpenAI, raising concerns regarding concentration risk.
The weakness in tech and crypto dragged down broader market futures. S&P 500 futures dropped 0.32% and Nasdaq futures decreased 0.52% in early trading hours, positioning the markets for a lower open.
