Monday Market Recap: IBM Falls to AI, Crypto Takes a Confidence Hit

Markets had a rough welcome back on Monday.

First blow: Trump's 15% global tariff

Last Friday (February 21), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump's "reciprocal tariff" policy by a 6-3 vote. For a moment, it looked like some relief for global trade. That didn't last long.

Over the weekend, Trump took to Truth Social with a workaround: since the Court blocked his reciprocal tariffs, he'd use a different legal authority instead, raising the existing 10% global tariff straight to 15%. His reasoning? Other nations have been "looting" the U.S. for decades.

The EU pushed back immediately, demanding clarification and warning the move could blow up the U.S.-EU trade agreement. The European Parliament froze ratification of the deal shortly after.

This is the kind of policy whiplash that rattles markets. Sudden, unpredictable, and with no clear endgame in sight.

Second blow: Anthropic takes a shot at IBM

Also on Monday morning, Anthropic dropped a major Claude Code update with a capability that caught Wall Street off guard: automated COBOL modernization.

COBOL is a programming language from the 1960s that still quietly powers a huge chunk of global banking, aviation, and government infrastructure. Modernizing it has traditionally been a years-long, consultant-heavy project. Anthropic's blog put it plainly: "Modernizing a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows... AI changes this."

That "armies of consultants" line hit IBM where it hurts. A big part of IBM's consulting business is built on exactly this kind of legacy system work. IBM's stock dropped 13.4% on Monday, its worst single-day performance among Dow components, and is now down nearly 22% for the year.

AI displacing legacy tech businesses isn't a new story. But Monday was a reminder that it's still very much happening.

U.S. Equities: Dow drops 883 points; defensive stocks the sole safe haven

All three major indices closed deep in the red on Monday:

• Dow Jones Industrial Average: -883 points (-1.78%), closing at 48,742

• S&P 500: -0.9%, closing near 6,740

• Nasdaq: -1.2%, closing near 24,500

IBM wasn't alone in the selloff. AI anxiety spread to payments and financial services too: American Express dropped 7.32%, Salesforce fell 5.11%. Software stocks broadly took a beating, continuing a two-week streak of "AI substitution" fears weighing on the sector.

The one bright spot? Walmart, up 2.3%, as investors rotated into safer, defensive names.

Tuesday's pre-market was a little calmer: Dow futures up ~48 points (+0.1%), S&P 500 futures +0.14%, Nasdaq futures +0.22%. But the VIX Fear Index is still sitting at 21, up 10% intraday, so it's not exactly smooth sailing yet.

Worth watching: Apple has been quietly holding up better than most over the past month. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Apple is developing three new AI-powered wearables, smart glasses, a pendant device, and next-gen AirPods, all centered on Siri. Unlike its Big Tech peers, Apple is leaning into high-margin hardware rather than burning cash on AI infrastructure.

Gold: Hits $5,240, a three-week high

If there was a winner on Monday, it was gold.

Spot gold climbed to $5,230-$5,242 per ounce, up about 1.7% on the day, and held above $5,240 into Tuesday's open.

A few things are driving this.

• Trump's tariff escalation has pushed trade uncertainty back to the forefront, sending investors toward safe havens.

• The EU freezing its trade deal with the U.S. adds another layer of geopolitical noise.

• Middle East tensions aren't helping either: U.S. military presence in the region is approaching levels not seen since the 2003 Iraq War, and Iran briefly closed the Strait of Hormuz for military exercises, bumping up risk premiums.

• On top of all that, Fed rate-cut expectations are still alive, keeping real yields soft and gold attractive.

Silver lagged but found its footing near $88/oz, recovering from last week's lows.

Goldman Sachs also raised its Q4 Brent crude target to $60/bbl over the weekend, pointing to stalled U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, U.S. control over Venezuelan oil, and pressure on Russian exports. Tighter oil supply feeds inflation expectations, which in turn supports gold.

Crypto: Bitcoin under $64,000; sentiment still deep in the red

Bitcoin is hovering between $64,000 and $65,400, down about 5% over the past 24 hours. Ethereum is sitting near $1,950, also under pressure.

IBM's selloff dragged crypto down with it. Bitcoin's correlation with software stocks has been unusually high lately, and Monday was another example of that playing out in real time.

Sentiment-wise, things are pretty grim. The Fear & Greed Index is at 5, firmly in "Extreme Fear" territory. RSI is around 37.87. Out of 30 technical indicators, 24 are flashing bearish.

Two events this week made things worse:

Bitdeer sold every Bitcoin it had. On February 20, Bitdeer, the publicly traded mining company chaired by Wu Jihan, revealed in its weekly report that its self-held Bitcoin balance had hit zero. The company mined 189.8 BTC during the period and sold all of it. It also net-sold another 943.1 BTC, wiping out its entire treasury.

Here's what makes it strange: Bitdeer just hit 63.2 EH/s in self-operated hash rate, surpassing Marathon Digital's 60.4 EH/s to become the largest publicly traded self-mining operation in the world. The number one miner by hash rate, holding zero Bitcoin.

Bitdeer says it's pivoting to AI infrastructure and high-performance computing and needed the liquidity for land acquisitions. Wu Jihan added that this doesn't mean they'll never hold Bitcoin again.

But the optics are hard to spin: if the world's biggest miner doesn't want Bitcoin on its balance sheet, it raises questions for everyone else.

Vitalik keeps selling ETH. On-chain analytics platform Lookonchain tracked Vitalik selling around 1,869 ETH between February 21-22, worth about $3.67 million. For the month of February, he's sold over 8,800 ETH totaling roughly $18.45 million.

He still holds around 224,000 ETH (about $439 million at $1,900/ETH), but his holdings have dropped from a 2015 peak of 662,810 ETH to just 0.20% of total supply.

Between founder selling, weakening staking demand, and Binance ETH inflows hitting their highest level since November 2025, ETH has slipped to around $1,850, down 5% in 24 hours and 30% on the month.

Hedge funds have been quietly exiting Bitcoin spot ETFs for months now. Net outflows since January are over $1 billion. Retail isn't showing up either, with 24-hour trading volume near $48.5 billion, on the low end by recent standards.

The bigger issue for Bitcoin right now isn't the charts. It's the story. Gold surging while Bitcoin slumps puts the "digital gold" narrative under real pressure. The "inflation hedge" angle isn't landing well with rate cuts still delayed. And when industry veterans like Wu Jihan exit Bitcoin entirely to chase AI, and Vitalik is consistently selling, it's hard not to notice.

On the technical side, $60,000 is the line to watch. Losing that opens up a path toward $55,000-$58,000. Getting back to $70,000 looks like a stretch for now.

Summary

Monday packed a lot in. Trump rewrote tariff policy through legal improvisation, rattling global trade. Anthropic published a blog post that sent IBM, a century-old institution, tumbling 13%.

Gold is steady above $5,240. Bitcoin is grinding below $64,000. And two of crypto's biggest names took actions that are hard to ignore: one cleared out an entire Bitcoin treasury to bet on AI, the other sold over $18 million in ETH in a single month.

Not exactly a quiet start to the week.

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