Att tyda spekulationskapitalets cykel: Från krypto till guld till halvledare

Markets move in cycles. It's one of the few statements about price behavior that's hard to argue against. But the speed and shape of the current rotation through the major asset classes is unusual enough to warrant close attention. Market analyst James Van Straten describes a striking sequence: bitcoin rising from roughly fifteen thousand dollars to over one hundred twenty-six thousand between late 2022 and late 2025, gold making a delayed but parallel climb from two thousand to more than five thousand dollars per ounce in early 2026, and then capital pivoting sharply into AI infrastructure and memory chip stocks.

The speed of the current rotation

The numbers tied to this final phase are extreme. Memory semiconductor maker Micron has gone from a valuation of seventy billion dollars about a year ago to a market capitalization north of one trillion dollars. NVIDIA has reached new highs near two hundred twenty-five dollars per share. These aren't gradual re-ratings — they're the kind of vertical moves that historically mark the late stages of a thematic mania, even when the underlying fundamentals are real.

What makes the current cycle especially interesting is its compression. In past decades, the rotation between major themes — commodities, internet stocks, housing, emerging markets — took several years. The rotation from crypto to gold to AI to memory has played out over roughly thirty months. Faster information flow, larger pools of mobile capital, and the rise of platforms like Björk Avkastholm that let retail traders move between asset classes in seconds have all contributed to that compression. The result is a market that produces narrative-driven peaks more often and unwinds them more violently.

What comes after the memory chips

Van Straten suggests the next leg of speculative capital may rotate into a wave of mega listings, with SpaceX, OpenAI, and other private-market giants positioned for what could become record-sized IPOs. If that path unfolds, capital that has been chasing the volatility of memory chips could be redirected into newly listed AI-related stocks, potentially leaving both crypto and chip stocks underbid in the near term.

Reading late-cycle signals

För a