Bitcoin (BTC) Nears $81K as Nvidia Earnings Fuel Risk-On Rally

Nvidia’s Record Quarter

Nvidia reported second-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $96.22 billion for the May–July period, a 106% year-on-year increase that landed roughly $4 billion above the $92.27 billion consensus, per the company’s investor-relations disclosure. Earnings per share climbed 119.8% to $2.22, well ahead of the $2.09 analysts expected, and the stock closed 8.74% higher — near 9% — in the session that followed. The print lifted the Nasdaq Composite 1.57% and the S&P 500 0.72%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average managed only a 0.20% gain. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index jumped 2.33%, and SK Hynix’s US-listed receipts added 2.27%. Software names joined the move: Salesforce surged 22.58% after adjusted EPS of $5.90 crushed the $3.27 consensus, a result the market read as evidence that enterprise software grows alongside AI rather than being displaced by it; Oracle rose 2.06% and Palantir 4.75%. Memory and storage hardware lagged, however — Micron slipped 0.32%, Sandisk 0.96% and Western Digital 1.47% — as investors weighed rising memory input costs against hardware margins. The AI momentum has now spread well beyond equities, spilling into crypto-adjacent retail behavior, from AI trading bot adoption to leveraged altcoin positioning.

KOSPI Eyes 7,000

Seoul carried the boost into Thursday’s session. The KOSPI closed Wednesday at 6,912.37, up 104.16 points or 1.53%, after opening at 6,996.12 — a 2.76% jump — before a Bank of Korea rate hike trimmed the advance. The central bank’s monetary policy committee raised the base rate by 25 basis points to 3.00% from 2.75%, and the index’s gain briefly shrank to 0.49% before recovering. Foreign investors bought a net 1.524 trillion won and institutions 1.763 trillion won, while retail investors sold a net 1.9138 trillion won. The dominant buyer was the “other corporations” category, which took up a net 1.5952 trillion won — a sixth consecutive day of trillion-won net purchases — driven by Samsung Electronics’ buyback for employee stock incentives and SK Hynix’s purchase-and-cancellation program. Korea’s fear gauge, the VKOSPI volatility index, fell 4.64% to 53.01, a fourth straight decline from an intraday spike near 98 in late June. Looking ahead, Daishin Securities researcher Lee Kyung-min argued in a Thursday note that the index could attempt to reclaim the 7,000 line next week on strong semiconductor earnings, shareholder-return momentum and an expected Federal Reserve hold at the September FOMC, whose freeze probability markets peg at 63.5%; a hold above 7,000 would keep the case for 8,000 alive, though only if earnings, flows and rates align.

Tariff and Rates Headwinds

The risk picture is not one-sided. Reports that the US administration is studying high-intensity tariffs extending beyond semiconductors themselves to finished products containing them — laptops, game consoles and data-center servers among them — injected fresh uncertainty into tech supply chains. Mirae Asset Securities executive Seo Sang-young noted that the overnight rally was narrow: the AI supply chain did not rise in unison, memory price increases pressured hardware profitability, and wariness over additional chip tariffs and elevated Treasury yields persisted, with declining stocks outnumbering gainers by more than two to one on Wall Street. Geopolitics added pressure after White House press secretary Caroline Levitt confirmed there are no US–Iran talks, while a report that President Donald Trump has no interest in returning to the June memorandum of understanding with Tehran pushed oil higher. US bond yields climbed late in the session, briefly trimming equity gains. Against that backdrop, investors are waiting for Fed Chair Kevin Washi’s Jackson Hole speech. Kiwoom Securities researcher Han Ji-young expects a cautious stance on further tightening, arguing that expanded Treasury buybacks and reduced inflation uncertainty from July CPI and PCE data give the chair room to hold. Notably, KOSPI 200 night futures slipped 0.73% even as most Korean sentiment indicators — including the MSCI Korea ETF, up 1.65% — rose.

Bitcoin’s $81K Test at Jackson Hole

Details from the earnings release flesh out the scale of Nvidia's beat: data-center revenue climbed 117% year-on-year to $89 billion, net profit rose 126% to $59.7 billion, and the company returned roughly $26 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends during the quarter. CEO Jensen Huang said the next-generation Vera Rubin platform has entered full production, and management guided third-quarter revenue to around $108 billion — ahead of the roughly $104.2 billion analysts modeled — with no China data-center processor revenue included in that outlook. Notably, the initial crypto reaction was muted: BTC continued to trade in a tight range above $78,000 following the print, underscoring that digital assets are currently taking their cues from Federal Reserve policy expectations rather than equity earnings, with attention fixed on Chair Kevin Washi's upcoming Jackson Hole remarks.

New details from Nvidia's disclosure point to a longer runway: CFO commentary projected fiscal 2028 revenue growth of roughly 70% year-on-year, even with supply constraints factored in, while the data-center segment's AI cloud, industrial and enterprise (ACIE) unit grew 2.4-fold — outpacing the hyperscaler business's roughly 2x pace — as sovereign-scale AI buildouts broaden the buyer base beyond Big Tech. The AI power theme also reached crypto equities: MARA Holdings rose 5.79%, buoyed by bitcoin briefly reclaiming $80,000 on August 25 for the first time since mid-May and by its own AI/HPC pivot, including a July 2026 agreement with HIF USA LLC for over 1,200 acres in Matagorda County, Texas, with grid access scaling to up to 1GW by October 2027 and 2GW by April 2028. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projects US data centers will consume about 11.8% of US electricity by 2030, within a 9.5–15.3% range, reinforcing power and land as key mining-sector assets.

(as of 06:28 UTC) For crypto, the through-line is Nasdaq beta. COINOTAG’s live snapshot has Bitcoin (BTC) at $80,578 as of press time, sitting just below the psychologically heavy $81,000 handle and still far beneath its all-time high territory. If Washi strikes a patient tone at Jackson Hole and the tariff talk stays rhetorical, the risk-on impulse from Nvidia’s beat should keep bid support under BTC and the broader altcoin complex, which historically amplifies Nasdaq moves in both directions. The flip side: a hawkish surprise, a concrete tariff rollout or renewed yield pressure would test the $80,000 shelf quickly. Stablecoin pegs, meanwhile, remain a sideshow in this tape — even algorithmic stablecoin designs are irrelevant next to the macro print, which is what moves this market now.