The bigger move was in stocks. A selloff in semiconductor shares spread to South Korea on Thursday, where the Kospi index fell almost 7% before paring losses. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each dropped more than 6%, and Kioxia fell 13% in Japan after a rally that had lifted the stock more than 650% this year.
The declines revived worries that this year's blistering run in artificial-intelligence stocks has outpaced reality.
Two reports fed the unease. Meta is building a cloud business to sell access to spare AI computing power, Bloomberg reported, which raised concern the company had overbuilt. Apple is in talks to buy chips from two Chinese semiconductor makers, a move that would hurt Korean suppliers.
The AI trade is where money has flowed all quarter while bitcoin fell, giving the asset a rare back-to-back quarterly loss for only the third time in history. Capital rotated steadily into chipmakers and AI infrastructure as crypto closed a losing first half, so cracks there could ease the pull that has weighed on the market.
Elsewhere, Brent crude fell to about $70.60 a barrel, its lowest since late February, before the Middle East war began, as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz recovered.