Bitcoin is at $67,000. Down 45% from the October 2025 peak of $126,000. Down through the Iran war, the failed stablecoin bills, the ETF outflows, the Trump Media selling.
NEAR is up 69% on the week. FET is up 38%. RENDER is up 13%. VVV has exploded over 1,600% from its December lows.
The market is not rotating out of crypto. It is rotating within it, from Bitcoin to the coins closest to the biggest IPO cycle in history.
Source: Tradingview
The Anthropic and OpenAI Effect
Anthropic filed its IPO papers on Monday, days after completing a fundraising that valued it at $900 billion. Its filings came shortly after OpenAI made its submissions to the SEC. SpaceX pricing is expected June 11.
Three trillion-dollar AI companies going public in the same window has created a specific type of speculative demand in crypto: traders buying the tokens that are closest to the AI infrastructure story those IPOs represent.
NEAR Protocol offers an AI agent marketplace. FET powers the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance. Render provides distributed GPU computing. Venice Token offers confidential AI queries across major models. All have surged as traders position around the OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic IPOs.
The thesis is straightforward. If Anthropic is worth $965 billion and OpenAI is worth $1 trillion, the decentralized AI infrastructure layer, the protocols that provide compute, agents, and data without corporate gatekeepers, should be worth more than the market currently prices them at.
That argument is debatable. The price action is not.
Why These Coins During a Bitcoin Decline
US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.3 billion in net outflows during May, the deepest monthly drain of the year, with a 10-day Bitcoin ETF outflow streak coinciding with institutional capital rotating toward AI equities.
Bitcoin is caught between two forces right now. The Iran war has kept oil above $90, inflation elevated, and rate cut hopes suppressed. The SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic IPO window is draining liquidity from the broadest risk assets, and Bitcoin, as the most liquid volatile asset in institutional portfolios, gets sold first.
AI tokens face neither of those headwinds with the same intensity. They are not held in spot ETFs that institutional risk managers can easily trim. They are not the first line of defense when a fund needs to raise cash for an IPO allocation. And they have a direct narrative tailwind from the very IPOs that are suppressing Bitcoin.
The result is what the chart shows, NEAR, FET, and RENDER all diverging sharply from Bitcoin since late May, running 15% to 69% while BTC trades flat to lower.
The Coins and What They Actually Do
NEAR Protocol is the clearest beneficiary. NEAR’s AI agent marketplace and broader L1 ecosystem mean it can benefit from AI hype flows while also having real product hooks, agents, confidential multi-asset trading, and AI infrastructure. Anthropic’s filing specifically accelerated NEAR’s move as traders drew a direct line between the Claude creator going public and the on-chain AI agent infrastructure NEAR is building.
FET – the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance token, has surged 55% from its year-to-date low. The alliance merges Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol into a single AI token with combined infrastructure spanning autonomous agents, AI model marketplaces, and data exchanges.
Venice Token has exploded over 1,600% from its December lows. VVV offers confidential AI search across major models, uses a freemium funnel, and burns roughly 42% of supply while offering staking for double-digit returns. The burn and staking mechanics make the speculative demand stickier than pure narrative plays.
The Risk Nobody Is Pricing
We wrote two weeks ago that when SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic go public, someone has to sell something. The liquidity drain argument applies to AI tokens too, just with a lag.
The narrative tailwind that is lifting NEAR and FET now is the same IPO cycle that will eventually require institutional allocators to raise cash. The 2026 IPO market is active and potentially record-setting, but it is selective, favoring proven AI and space plays over pure crypto plays. AI tokens benefit from the narrative. They do not benefit from the capital flows — that money goes to Anthropic and OpenAI, not to NEAR and FET.
When the IPOs actually hit and institutions need liquidity, AI tokens will not be immune. The sell pressure arrives later than Bitcoin but it arrives.
What the Chart Is Saying
Source: Tradingview
The comparison chart shows NEAR leading the pack at +68.87%, FET at +37.27% and VVV at +13.65% while Bitcoin sits at -4.92% over the same window. The divergence started sharply around May 30, exactly when Anthropic’s confidential S-1 filing became public knowledge.
The SpaceX IPO prices June 11. That is the next binary event. If it prices well and opens strong, AI token momentum likely continues through the Anthropic and OpenAI windows. If SpaceX disappoints, the narrative rotation reverses fast.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
