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Today’s Menu

• Anthropic Goes After OpenAI With Super Bowl Ad Campaign

• Bitcoin Crashes to $70K as $800M in Positions Get Liquidated

Markets

TODAY IN AI

Anthropic Goes After OpenAI With Super Bowl Ad Campaign

Anthropic dropped a new Super Bowl ad campaign mocking the idea of ads inside AI chats, pairing it with a formal pledge to keep Claude ad-free. The move directly targets OpenAI's recent decision to bring ads to ChatGPT.

Anthropic published a blog committing to keep its AI assistant ad-free, stating advertising would be "incompatible" with Claude acting in users' interests. The Super Bowl campaign features the tagline "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude," showing parodies of ads interrupting helpful AI conversations.

OpenAI CMO Kate Rouch hit back on X, arguing free access to ChatGPT does more good than Anthropic's paid-only subscriptions that reach a fraction of the users. Sam Altman called it "clearly dishonest," saying OpenAI would never run intrusive ads and that Anthropic serves "an expensive product to rich people."

Anthropic's spot draws a clear line between its vision for Claude and OpenAI's ad-supported direction without pulling punches. But OpenAI's counterargument that free, ad-powered access is more democratic than a product only paying users can unlock carries weight when the user gap sits in the hundreds of millions.

TODAY IN CRYPTO

Bitcoin Crashes to $70K as $800M in Positions Get Liquidated

Bitcoin set another 15-month low, and the selling isn't slowing. BTC dropped to around $70,091 on Wednesday, its lowest price since November 2024. It now trades around $71,000, down over 7% in 24 hours and nearly 20% on the week. The $74,000 support level analysts flagged as critical is gone.

Over $800 million in crypto positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, with long traders taking most of the damage. Trader Roman noted: "Notice how volume is high every time price moves down. That tells us when volume comes in, it's selling. Bear market price action."

This isn't isolated to crypto. U.S. technology stocks are getting crushed. AMD dropped 17% after its 2026 outlook missed expectations. Palantir fell 14%, Micron lost 12%, and Nvidia, Tesla, and Intel all dropped 5% or more. The Nasdaq 100 is down 2.2% on the day.

Crypto miners tied to AI infrastructure got hit harder. Cipher Mining fell 20%, Hut 8 dropped 14%, and MARA and Riot both lost over 10%. Miner profitability hit a 14-month low, according to CryptoQuant.

K33 Research Head Vetle Lunde sees "unsettling similarities" to the 2018 and 2022 bear markets but argues "this time is different." Institutional adoption, regulated products, and no forced deleveraging events like FTX or Luna make a full 80% collapse unlikely in his view. He stated: "We do not expect a repeat of 2018 or 2022. We view current prices as attractive entry levels for any investor with a long-term approach."

Still, if $74,000 doesn't reclaim as support, the next targets could be $69,000—Bitcoin's November 2021 peak—or $58,000, its 200-week moving average. Galaxy's Alex Thorn warned earlier this week that $58,000 is a real possibility if selling persists.

In yesterday's poll, only 16% thought Bitcoin has already bottomed. The majority (67%) expect BTC to fall further, with 34% targeting $58K-$65K and 33% expecting $65K-$70K.

Stocks keep sliding. Crypto remains volatile. The government shutdown is over, but Homeland Security funding only extends until February 13, keeping another deadline risk in play. For now, bears remain in control.

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Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Damon James