Bitcoin’s slide below $77,000 sets up a Monday tech test as AI leaders sound warning

Bitcoin traded below $77,000 on Sunday as a weak week extended into the weekend, leaving traders facing fresh AI uncertainty and an approaching Federal Reserve meeting.

Bitcoin traded at $76,695 near press time, down 0.80% over 24 hours and 4.08% over seven days. The retreat puts the cryptocurrency back near a price area it visited before the weekend, with a Federal Reserve meeting also approaching.

The price area is also familiar. CryptoSlate’s Sept. 11 coverage reported an intraday low of $76,676 on Sept. 10, ahead of the Saturday AI statements. That chronology makes the weekend’s move an extension of existing weakness rather than the beginning of a sell-off that can be attributed entirely to the new warnings.

The scale and timing of the move matter. Bitcoin was still up 22.34% over 30 days, putting the latest losses within a broader monthly recovery.

Reported 24-hour trading volume was about $13.44 billion, down 49.98%. That describes how much trading occurred; it does not measure available buy orders or show which news prompted investors to sell. The price decline and lower turnover are separate measurements: neither reveals a single explanation for the day’s trading.

The fresh uncertainty is how investors will interpret calls to change the pace of AI development. NPR reported Saturday that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged slower development and independent evaluators, and that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreed and said his company would follow suit.

Altman told Fortune in an interview released Saturday that OpenAI’s initial public offering would be delayed until 2027, citing safety concerns.

Those reports give investors a new question about the timing of AI progress and its commercial milestones. They do not establish an industrywide halt, a cut in chip orders or a corresponding change in listed technology companies’ earnings. A market response to those possibilities remains a scenario for Monday, not an observed outcome.

Inflation keeps a separate pressure in view

The AI debate arrives against an already difficult inflation backdrop. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Sept. 10 that final-demand producer prices rose 0.4% in August on a seasonally adjusted basis and 5.4% over the year before seasonal adjustment.

Goods prices increased 1.1% during the month. Energy prices rose 4.2% and accounted for more than three-fourths of that goods increase, showing how heavily energy contributed to the latest wholesale-price rise.

The energy contribution places the inflation debate on a different footing from the AI debate. One concerns prices already paid in August; the other concerns how companies may develop and commercialize technology in the future. Both will be in view ahead of the Fed’s Sept. 15–16 policy meeting, with a press conference scheduled for Sept. 16.

The calendar therefore presents two distinct checkpoints: Monday’s equity response to the weekend news, followed by the Fed meeting. Neither result is known yet.

The NYSE’s regular core session runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern. Monday’s technology-stock performance will offer a first regular-session comparison with Bitcoin’s weekend decline. A fall in both would be consistent with broader caution, although that would still leave the cause of each move open. Futures and extended-hours activity can provide earlier indications, but they are distinct from that regular session.

A steadier technology session would weaken the case for treating Sunday’s Bitcoin move as a warning of an immediate tech sell-off. A weaker session would make the comparison more relevant without proving that the AI statements drove either market.

For Bitcoin, the immediate question is whether buyers can reverse the weekend loss as regular US markets reopen. The Fed meeting then brings a separate decision point, keeping Monday’s AI reaction from becoming the only explanation for the week ahead.