Anthropic legal AI plugin triggers $285B rout, BTC hits $72,835 – Feb 2026

Anthropic’s legal AI plugin release for Claude Cowork became a focal point for investors on Feb. 3 as legal software and data-services stocks sold off sharply across the US and Europe. The Nasdaq slid about 1.4%–1.5% and crypto moved with risk assets, with Bitcoin briefly dipping to $72,835 before partially recovering.

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Context

The Anthropic legal AI plugin sits inside Anthropic’s Cowork ecosystem, which aims to automate “non-coding work” using Claude as an agent. On its plugin page, Anthropic says the Legal tool can automate work such as contract review, NDA triage, compliance tasks, legal briefings, and templated responses, and it adds that outputs should be reviewed by licensed attorneys.

Market anxiety centered on whether agent-style tools compress pricing power for incumbents that sell research, workflow, and data access into regulated professions. Bloomberg reported the move cascaded beyond a single niche, describing a $285 billion rout across software, financial services, and asset management on Feb. 3 as investors dumped shares with AI-disruption exposure.

Details

Reports tied the selloff to Anthropic’s legal-focused AI tool distributed via GitHub and framed it as a substitution risk for seat-license-heavy models. Yahoo Finance also characterized the day as a legal software and professional-services software slide after the Anthropic AI release, citing pressure across names exposed to legal workflows and analytics.

Several bellwether stocks saw outsized one-day drops, including RELX falling 14.4% on its London listing, according to MarketBeat’s Feb. 3 note. Bitcoin tracked the risk-off tape: KuCoin’s Feb. 4 daily market report said BTC briefly fell to $72,835 during the Feb. 3 move, and Yahoo Finance historical data shows an intraday low in the same low-$72k area.

Safe-haven rotation was visible in metals alongside the equity drawdown. Economic Times reported silver futures surged 12.43% to about $86.58 per ounce on Feb. 3, while Trading Economics data pages also reflected a sharp jump in silver during the session.

Impact

Crypto sentiment weakened in parallel with equities: KuCoin described the broader market as still in a “weak recovery phase” and flagged “Extreme Fear” conditions in its sentiment gauge. The same KuCoin report said BTC’s dip undercut a prior “pre-tariff low” from April 2025, reinforcing the narrative of technical damage during a macro-style deleveraging.​

The selloff also spilled into regions and sectors perceived as leveraged to knowledge-work margins, including IT services. “The IT selloff in the US yesterday will drag the Indian IT index, too, constraining the rally in the Indian market. Since valuations continue to be high there is no fundamental support for a sustained rally,” said Dr. VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Investments Limited, in remarks published Feb. 3.

From Anthropic’s side, the messaging has emphasized broad, non-technical automation use cases rather than a single legal vertical. “Since we launched Claude Code, we saw people using it for all sorts of non-coding work: doing vacation research, building slide decks, cleaning up your email, cancelling subscriptions, recovering wedding photos from a hard drive, monitoring plant growth, controlling your oven,” said Boris Cherny, Engineer, Anthropic, on Jan. 12 in a post introducing Cowork.​

Next Steps

Investors will watch whether pressure remains concentrated in legal and data-services names or broadens into other “information rent” businesses exposed to workflow automation. Another key variable is how quickly Anthropic and rivals ship connectors and enterprise controls that make agent deployments stick inside regulated environments.

For crypto, the near-term focus is whether Bitcoin can hold above the session lows after moving as a high-beta risk asset alongside tech. KuCoin flagged gold-linked tokens such as XAUT and PAXG as beneficiaries of the flight-to-safety bid, a pattern traders may keep monitoring if volatility persists.

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P.S. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Always conduct your own research and make independent decisions.