Daily Crypto Briefing - 2026-08-25

Good Morning Blocksignal Community,

Monday looked quiet for most of the session and then wasn't. Bitcoin spent European and early US hours parked around $77,800, barely moved from midnight UTC, digesting the sharpest weekly rally in over three years. Late in the US session it pushed through $80,000 for the first time since May 15, after the Treasury signalled it could reach into its roughly $1 trillion General Account to fund the expanded bond buybacks. Underneath that move, the more interesting data point was what derivatives did: futures open interest fell to a two-month low while price rose, which tells you this leg was bought with spot, not borrowed.

Market action and what actually moved it

Bitcoin opened Monday at $77,727.62, about 0.8% above Sunday's open, and traded up to roughly $79,100 by mid-morning New York time before the late push above $80,000. Ether opened at $2,463.09, up 1.6% on the day. The starting point matters here: BTC is now roughly 38% above the late-June and early-July lows, when it briefly traded below $58,000, and it is up around 23% month-to-date. That would make August its strongest month since 2017, in a month whose median historical return is negative 7%.

The driver is the same one we covered last week, now in its second act. On August 19, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised the maximum size of per-operation buybacks of 10-, 20- and 30-year bonds to at least $4 billion from $2 billion. The intent was to calm a long end where the 30-year yield had touched 5.33% on August 18, its highest since 2007. That intent has not been met. The 30-year sat around 5.25% on Monday, above the August 19 low of 5.19%. What the announcement did instead was move hard assets, and Monday's General Account comment extended the same logic: if the Treasury is willing to spend its cash balance defending the long end, markets read that as a policy priority rather than a technical adjustment.

Gold rallied alongside, adding about 0.8% Monday morning and sitting near record highs, while equities lagged. That combination is the tell. Bitcoin visibly decoupled from Nasdaq futures over the past week, climbing while the index fell, which reopens the old argument about whether BTC is a high-beta risk asset or a hedge against sovereign-debt and currency risk. On Monday it traded as the second thing.

Altcoins spent the day consolidating rather than reversing. Bitcoin dominance held near 59.2%, and the Altcoin Season index ticked up to 42 out of 100 from 33 on Friday, still firmly in bitcoin territory. Hyperliquid's HYPE slipped 3.3% to around $79.59 after setting a record $83.30 late Sunday, but remains up roughly 28% on the week. Aave eased 0.6% while holding a 62% weekly gain. XRP gave back 2.8% to $1.48 after a 47% week. Ethena had doubled the previous week to $1.79. Last week's altcoin strength was selective, not a broad rotation, and Monday's pullbacks look like profit-taking in the names that ran hardest.

Derivatives: a rally the leverage did not join

This is where Monday's data separates itself from a normal squeeze. Bitcoin futures open interest fell to a two-month low of 715,000 BTC, down from the August 18 high of 762,000 BTC, according to Coinglass. Open interest measures how many contracts are still live. Falling open interest into a rising price means positions are being closed, not opened, which points to shorts covering and spot buyers doing the lifting rather than traders piling into fresh leveraged longs. ETH, SOL and XRP showed the same divergence.

Zcash was the exception and worth flagging for the opposite reason. ZEC open interest climbed to 2.24 million tokens from 1.81 million a week earlier while the price rose more than 70%. Rising open interest alongside rising price is usually read as confirmation of a trend, but it also means the position is being built on borrowed money, which cuts both ways when the move reverses.

Elsewhere the positioning looks measured rather than stretched. Annualized funding rates for BTC, ETH and other majors hover around 10%, a bullish tilt but nothing unusual. Deribit's call-put skew flipped positive at the front end, so short-dated calls are now pricier than puts. Against that, the single most active contract by 24-hour volume was the $70,000 put, which is not the profile of a market that thinks the move is settled. One genuinely odd reading: bitcoin's 30-day implied volatility on the BVIV index jumped to an annualized 47% from 36% a week ago. That index usually spikes during selloffs, not rallies, so a rise here suggests traders are paying up for protection in both directions.

Flows and the liquidity backdrop

US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $337.6 million on Monday, a sixth consecutive day of net inflows and roughly $2.26 billion across the streak. Last week alone the 13 funds drew about $1.92 billion, their strongest week since October 2025, while ether funds added $697 million. Unlike the liquidation-driven moves of the previous days, this is money that has to be bought in spot, which is consistent with the open-interest picture above.

Exchange activity is recovering from a low base. Spot volume on centralized exchanges doubled in five days to around $37 billion, off the yearly low, but still well short of the $105 billion 12-month high set after the October 10 liquidations. Monthly volume tells the same story: about $490 billion so far in August against $670 billion in July. Worth remembering that spot CEX volume now shares demand with spot ETFs and, increasingly, with venues like Hyperliquid and Lighter, so a weaker CEX print no longer means weaker demand the way it once did.

Corporate treasuries and industry

Strategy filed an 8-K on Monday showing it sold 18,261,118 MSTR shares between August 17 and 23 for about $2.01 billion net, and bought no bitcoin. Of the proceeds, $300 million went to the existing USD Reserve and $136.4 million to repurchasing 1,431,212 STRC preferred shares, with roughly $1.57 billion into a newly created "USD Cash" account holding $1.59 billion as of August 23, alongside a $5.10 billion USD Reserve. The structural detail matters more than the headline: unlike the USD Reserve, the new USD Cash pool is permitted to fund bitcoin purchases, buybacks, debt repayment and dividends. Strive, separately, added 1,110 BTC for $81.5 million to reach 21,356 BTC, and Bitmine bought $81 million of ETH, its largest weekly haul since early July.

On the product side, Coinbase brought tokenized US stocks live on Base for eligible users outside the United States, starting with Apple, Nvidia, Meta and Alphabet. The tokens use B20, a Base standard built for stablecoins and real-world assets, with regulated broker Alpaca holding the underlying shares under the Abu Dhabi Global Market framework and Chainlink supplying price feeds. Day-one liquidity launched on Aerodrome. Standard Chartered also became the first bank to distribute a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin.

Regulation and geopolitics

The day's most consequential policy item was not crypto-native. At a Monday press conference, Bessent laid out the administration's plan for secondary sanctions on Iran covering digital assets, technology, aviation, gold and shipping, part of what officials have called an "economic D-Day." He said every country now has a defined timeline to shut down identified activity. Monday's designations included specific digital asset addresses. This follows June's sanctioning of Nobitex, Iran's largest exchange, and roughly $1 billion in crypto seized from Iran as of May. The near-term market read is indirect but real: escalation in the Middle East supports oil, oil supports inflation, and inflation is precisely the variable that has kept the long end of the Treasury curve stubborn.

Domestically, comments closed Monday on two joint SEC-CFTC requests covering swap definitions and swap data reporting, both relevant to crypto derivatives, while the Hyperliquid Policy Center urged the two agencies to harmonize their treatment of perpetual contracts. Stand With Crypto announced 32 House endorsements ahead of the midterms. Pakistan opened its crypto licensing regime with a September 5 registration deadline.

Today's Watch

Tuesday is a light data day before a heavy end of the week. Weekly ADP employment lands at 8:15 ET, CB Consumer Confidence for August at 10:00 ET with a 91.2 estimate against 90.8 prior, and July money supply at 13:00 ET. Australian July inflation comes at 21:30 ET. Humanity unlocks 7.92% of its circulating supply, worth roughly $20 million.

The real events sit later. Jackson Hole runs August 26 to 28, with Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivering his first keynote in that role, and core PCE arrives Wednesday at 8:30 ET with a 0.2% monthly and 3.3% annual estimate, alongside the second estimate of Q2 GDP at 1.5%. A speech that keeps further tightening at arm's length would preserve the weaker-dollar, lower-yield backdrop this rally has been leaning on; a hawkish surprise would test it. Closer in, two things are worth tracking today: whether the ETF inflow streak extends to a seventh session, and whether $80,000 behaves as support or as a level the market sells into. Bitcoin has just cleared a 24% week, and momentum at that pace tends to face a higher bar the second time.

Sources

CoinDesk — Bitcoin hits $80,000 for the first time since May as crypto recovery accelerates

CoinDesk — Bitcoin steadies near $78,000 as gold rallies, altcoins consolidate after best week in 3 years

CoinDesk — Bessent's $4 billion bond buyback wanted lower yields. It got a bitcoin surge instead.

CoinDesk — Financial repression: The new buzzword for bitcoin bulls

CoinDesk — Jackson Hole Symposium, U.S. PCE prices, IREN earnings: Crypto Week Ahead

The Block — Crypto exchange volumes double in five days as market activity rebounds

The Block — US escalates Iran pressure with sanctions on crypto, aviation, shipping and gold as part of 'economic D-Day'

The Block — Strive acquires 1,110 bitcoin for $81.5 million as total holdings reach 21,356 BTC

Yahoo Finance — Bitcoin and ethereum prices today, Monday, August 24, 2026

Cointribune — Bitcoin ETFs Post 6 Straight Sessions of Inflows, Attracting $2.26 Billion

Crypto Briefing — Strategy raises $2 billion via MSTR stock sales as Bitcoin stash stays flat

Decrypt — Coinbase Brings Tokenized Stocks to Ethereum L2 Base