Live markets: Bitcoin, stocks, bonds sharply lower as Fed's Waller signals near-term rate hike

With the combination of Middle East escalation, a 9% Monday plunge in South Korea's Kospi, and a Fed governor suggesting a rate hike could come as soon as this month, the Nasdaq is down 1.5% minutes before the close.

That decline masks far larger drops in favored AI-related names like Micron, SanDisk, Intel, and Marvell.

Bitcoin miners turned AI data center providers are feeling the sting as well. MARA Holdings (MARA), Riot Platforms (RIOT), CleanSpark (CLSK), Iren (IREN), and Hut 8 (HUT) are all down about 5%.

"If we get another hot reading on core inflation this week, then the FOMC will need to consider tightening monetary policy in the near term," said Fed Governor Chris Waller in a speech Monday afternoon.

"I am cognizant of the mistake we made in 2021 by not responding sooner to the high inflation we observed, and I am determined to avoid repeating it."

Waller's hawkish comments have hit already pressured markets, with the two-year Treasury yield surging to a new multi-year high of 4.27%, and the 10-year yield jumping to 4.6%.

Stocks have moved to session lows, the Nasdaq down 1.3%. Bitcoin's modest attempt at a bounce has reversed, the price falling back to $62,300, off 2.8% over the past 24 hours.

The next core inflation reading comes Tuesday morning, with markets expecting the monthly pace to remain flat at 0.2% and the year-over-year rate to remain flat as well at 2.9%.

Charles Schwab sees the debate over Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP-110) as a governance dispute that could create short-term market volatility but is unlikely to threaten the network itself.

Jim Ferraioli, Schwab's director of digital currencies research and strategy, said the proposal's biggest risk is the potential for a temporary chain split if a user-activated soft fork moves forward without broad miner support. That could create settlement uncertainty for exchanges, custodians and users.

BIP-110 would temporarily restrict non-financial data stored on Bitcoin, including some transactions tied to Ordinals and Runes. The proposal faces an early August deadline, but fewer than 1% of miners are currently signaling support.

A near-10% crash in South Korea's Kospi, helped along by a record 15% plunge in memory chip maker SK Hynix has Nasdaq 100 futures lower by 1.15%. Fellow memory chip maker Micron Technologies (MU) is down 5% pre-market.

Also at work was renewed bombing of Iranian targets by the U.S. military on Sunday. That's pushed oil to a 3% gain.

Crypto is falling alongside, with bitcoin minutes ago dropping to a new session low of $62,300, or off about 3% over the past 24 hours. Other crypto majors are down similarly.

Bitmine Immersion (BMNR) continues to add to its ETH stake, bringing holdings to 5.77 million tokens last week, according to a Monday press release.

Chairman Tom Lee extolled the new Robinhood Chain: "One of the biggest crypto success stories in 2026 is the breakaway success of the Robinhood Chain L2 mainnet on July 1, built on Arbitrum," said Lee in the release. "Already, dollar volumes have exceeded $1 billion, and Robinhood Chain now has more trading volume than any other decentralized exchange (DEX), demonstrating the outstanding utility and product market fit for Ethereum, which is the underlying chain."

BMNR is lower by about 2% pre-market alongside ETH's decline over the weekend to $1,770.

SK Hynix fell a record 15% on Monday, dragging South Korea's Kospi down 9% and triggering a market-wide trading halt. Samsung dropped nearly 11%.

Foreign investors sold 1.7 trillion won, about $1.1 billion, of Kospi shares, most of it in SK Hynix, per exchange data.

The trigger was a mix of profit-taking and mechanics. Traders pointed to fears of weaker-than-expected earnings and a rotation into SK Hynix's newly listed American depositary receipts, which jumped 13% on their U.S. debut Friday.

Less than two months after joining the $1 trillion club, SK Hynix closed at about $875 billion. Both it and Samsung are now down at least 30% from their June peaks.

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded their first weekly inflows in nine weeks, attracting roughly $197 million, according to SoSoValue. This followed eight consecutive weeks of outflows, including $2.43 billion in May and $4.5 billion in June.

July has recorded $124 million in net inflows thus far.

Bitcoin fell to about $62,800 on Monday, down 1.4% over 24 hours, after sliding from roughly $64,300 during Asian morning hours, per CoinDesk data.

Nothing new drove it. Bitcoin has traded between roughly $59,000 and $66,000 for a month, and the Asian-session drop was a leverage flush inside that range. The liquidations were minor, running at about a sixth of what the market recorded at its worst over the past 30 days, per CoinGlass.

SK Hynix fell in Seoul the same day, but for its own reasons. The memory chipmaker's shares dropped after its U.S. trading debut, with traders pointing to profit-taking and a shift into the new American depositary receipts. The stock is down more than 30% from its June record after a run that took it up more than 25-fold since the end of 2022.

The two moves are not directly linked today, but they have shared a direction for weeks.

Bitcoin has traded as crypto's highest-beta risk asset while the AI and chip trade set the tone for global risk appetite, and analysts at Anchorage Digital attribute roughly 30% of the pressure on bitcoin to capital rotating into AI.

The June inflation print lands July 14, and the Fed meets July 28 and 29, the two events most likely to decide whether risk assets, crypto and chip stocks alike, get relief or another leg down.