Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

Returning from the Spring Festival holiday, on the first day back at work, the global market is experiencing a double blow.

First heavy strike: Trump's 15% global tariff.

Last Friday (February 21), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the "reciprocal tariff" policy that the Trump administration had previously implemented under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) with a vote of 6 to 3. This was originally a signal to loosen the global trade order, but Trump immediately responded on Truth Social over the weekend: since the Supreme Court won't let me implement "reciprocal tariffs," I will use another legal framework. He announced that he would immediately raise the previous 10% global tariff to 15% on the grounds that "these countries have been plundering America for decades."

The European Commission responded immediately, requesting the U.S. to "clarify next steps" and warning that this move could jeopardize trade agreements and transatlantic investments. The European Parliament then suspended the approval of trade agreements previously reached with the U.S.

This is a typical case where "policy uncertainty" severely undermines market confidence, sudden, random, and with unpredictable consequences.

Second heavy strike: Anthropic Claude Code, a punch to IBM's core.

During the Spring Festival (on February 23 at midnight Beijing time), Anthropic released a new feature update for Claude Code, announcing that its AI can automate the modernization of COBOL code, a programming language that originated in the 1960s and still runs hundreds of billions of lines of code in global finance, aviation, and government systems today. Anthropic wrote on its blog: "Modernizing COBOL used to require an 'army of consultants' spending years... Claude Code can now automate these tasks."

The phrase "army of consultants" strikes right at IBM. IBM's consulting business has long relied on the maintenance and upgrading of COBOL legacy systems, one of its most profitable businesses. As a result, yesterday (February 23), IBM's stock price plummeted by 13.4% in a single day, making it the largest decliner in the Dow Jones, with a cumulative decline of nearly 22% year-to-date.

The "replacement threat" of AI to traditional industries is once again playing out in reality, this time the one going down is the blue giant.

U.S. Stocks: Dow Jones falls 883 points, defensive sector becomes the only safe haven

Yesterday (February 23, East Coast time, Monday), the three major U.S. stock indices collectively experienced a sharp decline:

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 883 points, down 1.78%, closing at 48,742 points
• The S&P 500 fell 0.9%, closing around 6,740 points
• The Nasdaq declined 1.2%, closing around 24,500 points

In addition to IBM's 13.4% single-day plunge, the payment and financial services sector was also affected by the AI panic, with American Express falling 7.32% and Salesforce dropping 5.11%. Software stocks became increasingly hard-hit, continuing the previous two weeks' "AI replacement panic" narrative.

The only sector moving against the trend was defensive consumer: Walmart rose 2.3% in a single day, becoming the preferred choice for safety funds.

In pre-market trading today (February 24), futures bounced slightly, with Dow futures up about 48 points (+0.1%), S&P 500 futures up 0.14%, and Nasdaq futures up 0.22%. However, the VIX fear index remains high at 21, having jumped 10% in a single day, indicating that the market has not truly calmed down.

Notably, Apple has begun to stand out in the past month. Bloomberg reported today that Apple is accelerating the development of three new wearable devices equipped with AI features: smart glasses, pendant devices, and a new generation of AirPods, all built around the Siri assistant. Apple's strategy in the "AI arms race" is to avoid excessive capital expenditure and focus on high-margin hardware products—completely opposite to the paths of Microsoft, Google, and Meta. In the past month, Apple’s stock has outperformed the market.

Gold: King of Safe Havens, surging to $5,240, hitting three-week high

While the stock market is in turmoil, gold has emerged as the biggest winner.

Yesterday, the spot price of gold surged to around $5,230 to $5,242 per ounce, hitting a three-week high with a 1.7% gain in a single day. Today it continues to stabilize above $5,240 after opening.

The logic chain driving the rise in gold prices is very clear:

1. Trump's 15% global tariff causes extreme uncertainty in geopolitics and trade policy, leading safe-haven funds to flow into gold;
2. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the "reciprocal tariff," the EU suspended the approval of U.S.-EU trade agreements, plunging transatlantic economic relations into the unknown;
3. The situation in the Middle East remains tense, and the scale of U.S. military forces gathering in the Middle East is close to that during the 2003 Iraq War, with Iran recently announcing the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz for hours due to military exercises, increasing geopolitical risk premiums;
4. Federal Reserve rate cut expectations have not fully dissipated, and the decline in real interest rates provides long-term support for gold.

Silver slightly underperformed gold but is also oscillating around $88 per ounce, rebounding from last week's lows.

Goldman Sachs raised its oil price forecasts over the weekend, increasing the Q4 Brent crude oil target price from a previously lower forecast to $60 per barrel, citing that U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations have yet to yield results, the Venezuelan oil industry has been taken over by the U.S., and Russian exports are under pressure—indicating a tighter global oil supply chain than previously expected. The rise in oil prices also indirectly supports inflation expectations, which in turn supports gold.

Cryptocurrency Market: Bitcoin dips below $64,000, "extreme fear" persists

Currently, Bitcoin is fluctuating between approximately $64,000 to $65,400, experiencing a 5% drop over the past 24 hours. Ethereum is around $1,950, under pressure across the board.

Yesterday, IBM's plunge of 13% due to Anthropic directly weighed on the cryptocurrency market, as the correlation between Bitcoin and software stocks has been extremely high over the past few months.

The deeper issue lies in market sentiment. The Fear and Greed Index is currently at 5 (in the extreme fear zone), with the RSI indicator around 37.87 (neutral and weak). Technical indicators show that of the 30 technical signals, 24 are bearish, and only 6 are bullish.

However, two "confidence killers" have further exacerbated the already fragile market:

First is, Wu Jihan's Bitdeer clearing all its Bitcoin holdings.

On February 20 (last Thursday), Bitdeer, the mining company chaired by Wu Jihan, released a shocking weekly report on its official social media: as of February 20, the company's self-owned Bitcoin holdings (excluding customer deposits) had dropped to 0.

During the reporting period, Bitdeer mined 189.8 BTC and sold them all; while also reducing its holdings by 943.1 BTC, completely depleting its Bitcoin reserves.

This "clearance-style" sell-off took place at a dramatically significant moment: Bitdeer's self-owned computing power had just reached 63.2 EH/s, surpassing the 60.4 EH/s of the established giant Marathon Digital, becoming the world's largest publicly listed self-operated mining company by computing power.

Holding the world's largest computing power, yet choosing not to hold a single Bitcoin.

Bitdeer’s explanation is that the company is undergoing a full transition to AI infrastructure and high-performance computing business, securing liquidity for land acquisition. Wu Jihan responded that clearing all Bitcoin does not mean the company will not hold it in the future.
However, for the market, this signal is deadly: if the world's leading mining company does not see hope in Bitcoin, why should retail investors continue to believe?

Secondly, Vitalik Buterin continues to sell ETH.

According to data from the on-chain analysis platform Lookonchain, Vitalik sold approximately 1,869 ETH in the past two days (February 21-22), worth about $3.67 million. As of this February, Vitalik has sold over 8,800 ETH in total, with a total value of about $18.45 million.

Currently, Vitalik still holds about 224,000 ETH, worth about $439 million (calculated at $1,900/ETH). His ETH holdings have decreased from a peak of 662,810 in 2015 to only 0.20% of total supply.

The ongoing sell-off by the founder, coupled with a decrease in Ethereum staking demand and the influx of ETH into Binance reaching a new high since November 2025, under multiple pressures, ETH is currently around $1,850, with a 24-hour drop of over 5% and a monthly drop of 30%.

Hedge funds have been continuously withdrawing from Bitcoin spot ETFs over the past few months, with a net outflow exceeding $1 billion year-to-date. Retail interest is extremely low, with a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $48.5 billion, at a relatively low level.

The core issue facing Bitcoin is not technical, but narrative—the "digital gold" story is questioned in comparison to this round of soaring gold prices and plummeting Bitcoin; the positioning as "inflation hedging tool" has lost its allure in an environment where interest rate cuts are being postponed. And when industry figures like Wu Jihan choose to clear out Bitcoin to invest in AI, and when Vitalik continues to sell ETH, the foundation of faith begins to shake.

From a technical perspective, the $60,000 mark is a crucial psychological level; if it falls, the next support range is around $55,000 to $58,000. Resistance above $70,000 is difficult to break in the short term.

Upon return from the Spring Festival, the global market is simultaneously digesting two issues: one is Trump redefining tariff policies with "legal nesting dolls," plunging the global trade order into new uncertainty; the other is Anthropic's blog post, which has pushed a century-old technology giant like IBM onto the "AI replacement list."

Gold has firmly taken a stand at $5,240, while Bitcoin struggles below $64,000, and in the cryptocurrency industry, two key figures, Wu Jihan and Vitalik, one has cleared all Bitcoin from his own company to invest in AI, and the other has sold over $18 million in ETH this February.

On the first day back at work, the market's greeting is not friendly.