Bitcoin's Link to the S&P 500 Slides to 2021 Lows as AI Spending Leans on Bond Markets

Bitcoin's 30-day correlation with the S&P 500 has fallen to 0.17, the lowest reading since 2021. Within equities, stock-to-stock correlations are also hovering near record lows. At the same time, the AI spending boom is accelerating. AI-related capital expenditures are projected to reach about $400 billion in 2025. A growing portion of that outlay is being financed not with existing cash, but with new corporate debt. Recent deal activity underscores the shift. Meta issued a $30 billion bond offering. Amazon raised $25 billion, using yield incentives to draw in buyers. These are companies long associated with massive cash balances; now they're increasingly choosing to borrow. The change is showing up in debt coverage ratios, which gauge how easily earnings can service debt obligations. For some hyperscalers, coverage has slipped from roughly 5x to below 2x. Put simply, where earnings once covered debt payments about five times over, the buffer is now closer to two. Most of these firms still keep overall leverage below 1x. Even so, companies that were net-cash are moving into modest net-debt positions, and the pace of that transition is picking up. Low correlations, high dispersion—and a risk-model blind spot Equity markets are seeing unusually wide dispersion among AI-related names: stocks tied to the same broad AI thesis are moving in different directions on any given day. This combination of low correlations and high gamma can create the impression that risk is well distributed. That's where the camouflage effect comes in. Risk frameworks that depend on correlation to flag concentrated exposure may fail to recognize how much leverage and funding risk is accumulating in the AI buildout. The bond market and the stock market are sending different signals. Credit markets are highlighting aggressive borrowing to finance AI infrastructure. Equity market behavior, with its low correlations, can make conditions look calmer than they are. Where crypto enters the frame A 0.17 correlation with the S&P 500 implies Bitcoin has tended to move opposite the index more often than not over the past month. Still, if investors become uneasy about the pace of AI debt issuance and corporate credit conditions tighten, the impact can spill across interest rates, liquidity, and risk appetite—including in crypto. If AI-driven revenue growth fails to arrive quickly enough to justify $400 billion a year in spending, companies that financed data centers and model training with new debt will need those investments to generate returns. Leverage that looks manageable at under 1x can begin to feel heavier if cash flows don't keep up.