Oil drops more than 7% as crypto outflows and chip selling persist
Monday's Chain, Crude & Chips: crude settlements, Binance's phased withdrawals and the AI financing test.
Three markets ended Monday with different problems: oil repriced hopes for diplomacy, crypto investors tested exchange access, and chip stocks lost an early rebound.
Crude: diplomacy cuts the supply premium
December WTI settled at $96.46 a barrel, down $7.66 or 7.36%. January Brent settled at $104.77, down $8.66 or 7.63%. Talks involving Iran and Qatari mediators raised hopes of reducing Middle East supply disruptions, but no final settlement of the conflict is implied. The contract months matter when comparing prices across the month-end rollover. Read the earlier oil update.
Chain: withdrawals are a test of trust
Binance's phased reopening is now being tested by customer outflows. The company said it processed about $4.65 billion in withdrawals and $1.01 billion in deposits over 9.5 hours on Sunday, leaving a net outflow of about $3.64 billion. Those are different measures: gross withdrawals should not be described as the amount that left after deposits.
Binance said withdrawal volumes had declined after an initial spike. A reopening does not mean every asset and network is available, or that recovery of stolen funds is complete. The issue extends the phased restart covered in Sunday's sidebar. Bitcoin remained under pressure in Monday's market reporting; there is no single official daily close for the continuously traded asset.
Chips: the rebound fails to hold
Intel closed down 8.8%, while Marvell's Lumentum deal and new financing plans across the AI buildout kept investors focused on cost and execution. Anthropic's computing commitments add another measure of the capacity the industry is promising to buy. Strong demand and attractive returns are related questions, not the same one.
