Behind the scenes of crypto’s summer uptick
Aug 26•6 min read
In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:
- Crypto market on the rise
- XRP on the move
- Nvidia carries the AI baton
Market cast
From range-bound to breakout
Bitcoin's weekly chart has turned decisively bullish, with price now testing the 50-period SMA as its next upside resistance. The RSI, a momentum oscillator, and the Stochastic, another momentum oscillator, are both trending higher, and the MACD, a trend and momentum indicator, keeps its histogram deep in positive territory.
The daily chart is even more emphatic. Price has cleared the 200-period SMA along with every other major moving average and now sits near the upper Bollinger Band, the top of its recent volatility range. The RSI and Stochastic have pushed into overbought territory without yet showing signs of exhaustion, and the MACD histogram remains deep in positive territory. The ADX, which measures trend strength, reads near 35 — confirming a strong trend is building rather than fading.
Key levels to watch: on the downside, immediate support sits around $80,000, with the next level near $78,500. To the upside, resistance comes in around $82,000, followed by the $86,000–$87,000 zone, with the weekly 50-period SMA also acting as dynamic resistance along the way.
The big idea
Bitcoin's loudest week in two years
Last week we said a reclaim of $68,000 on rising volume, with ETF inflows following, would be the first sign the market's quiet summer was ending. And then the asset went well past this threshold. Bitcoin opened this week at just over $79,000, while in the last week, it saw its largest dollar-denominated weekly gain on record – a $14,264 rise that also amounted to 22.7% for the week.
This break traces to two events inside 48 hours. The U.S. Treasury doubled the size of its long-bond buyback program, from $2 billion to $4 billion per session, a move markets read as a debasement signal. Within a day, $2.75 billion in bitcoin shorts were liquidated, and the imbalance watched for weeks resolved in a single move rather than the slow bleed. Spot bitcoin ETFs took in $1.92 billion for the week; combined with ether funds, the pair pulled in $2.6 billion – their best week since October.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index jumped to 78, its highest reading since December 2024. Bitcoin demand also turned positive across both spot and perpetual futures markets for the first time since the asset's October 2025 all-time high, according to CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju, though he called the signal modest and said it would need to hold for another month to mark a genuine shift.
Citi's view is that the more durable driver is regulatory rather than macro, pointing out bitcoin's delayed reaction to the buyback announcement, plus ether outperforming bitcoin during the move. This is a market pricing in a friendlier US regulatory path. If that's right, the tell over the next month is whether ETF inflows — stalled since last October's liquidations — keep building, rather than fading once the squeeze is spent. Strive's Matt Cole also framed the week as bitcoin breaking out against both the dollar and gold simultaneously — the bitcoin-to-gold ratio now sits at its highest since May.
Breadth beyond bitcoin: The move wasn't BTC-only. XRP led altcoins with a 39% weekly gain, alongside double-digit moves in Solana and other coins. Hyperliquid's HYPE token added its own upward movement to a fresh all-time high near $78.
The takeaway: The question this rally answers is whether it was a squeeze or a shift, and this week's data doesn't fully settle it. Nvidia's earnings Wednesday and Fed Chair Warsh's Jackson Hole remarks Friday are the market's next two tests — of the AI trade's staying power and of whether rate-path expectations hold steady enough for this week's flows to keep coming. If ETF inflows extend and hold through both events, this stops looking like a short squeeze with good timing. If they stall the moment the calendar clears, last week's caution was the more durable stance after all.
Hot in crypto
XRP – a round trip journey
XRP had an eventful week. The rally carried it through $1.40 to a brief $1.69 high on just under $40 million of net ETF inflows, its best week since May. Saturday delivered the other side: a 37% drop in minutes, roughly $500 million in leveraged longs wiped out as thin weekend liquidity met an overleveraged book. Even so, XRP recovered most of the move within hours and sits near $1.50 now.
Capital already in has stayed in, but new wallet growth — the cleaner demand signal — hasn't turned, and futures open interest has round-tripped twice this month. A potential path to a genuine re-rating rather than another reset is the Senate's September 15 CLARITY Act vote, which Standard Chartered estimates could unlock $4–8 billion in institutional inflows. Until then, $1.45-1.50 is the level XRP needs to hold.
TradFi trends
Nvidia's turn to carry the AI trade
Wall Street's marquee earnings report lands Wednesday, with consensus pointing to Nvidia reporting $92 billion in quarterly revenue, up 96% year-over-year. Nvidia has beaten estimates for 14 straight quarters, but that streak has only raised the bar: options markets are pricing a swing of roughly 6% either way, and the stock enters the report on its longest losing streak since 2022.
Wednesday also brings Core PCE, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, arriving days after the Treasury doubled its long-bond buyback program — a fiscal move sitting awkwardly against a Fed still holding rates at 3.50% -- 3.75%. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole address Friday, and markets will be parsing it for which side of that tension wins out.
Macroeconomic roundup
A hawkish Fed meets its own data
Last week's FOMC minutes showed a more divided Fed than markets had priced: three regional presidents dissented in favor of a hike at the July meeting, the most hawkish split since 2016. This week's releases will show whether that pressure is building or fading.
Core PCE (Aug 26): July's reading of the Fed's preferred inflation gauge. June's came in soft — a 0.1% monthly decline, though the annual rate held at 3.7%, still well above target. A repeat would ease hike pressure; a hot print would validate it.
Q2 GDP, second estimate (Aug 26): Revised growth data — a dense window for anything that shifts the rate-path narrative.
Jackson Hole: Fed Chair Kevin Warsh (Aug 28): Warsh's first major address as chair. Markets will parse it for whether he leans toward hawkishness or holds the line.
CME FedWatch currently puts the odds of a September hold at roughly 68%, with most of the remaining probability on a hike rather than a cut. This week's data is what moves that number, in either direction.
The week's most interesting data story
Both ends of the ownership chain are buying
While this week's headlines went to leverage and liquidations, a quieter trend has been building underneath. Retail-sized wallets holding less than 1 BTC have ranked among Glassnode's strongest accumulator cohorts for months, buying through the summer's weakness rather than capitulating with it. That's now being joined from the other direction: entities holding more than 10,000 BTC added over 30,000 BTC in a single day this week and more than 55,000 BTC over the past month, pushing their combined holdings past 300,000 BTC — the highest level since November 2024. Small and large holders accumulating at the same time, on very different time horizons, is a rarer setup than either group buying alone, and it's the kind of alignment that tends to matter more once leverage-driven noise clears.
The numbers
The week’s most interesting numbers
$697 million — Ether ETF inflows for the week, their strongest of 2026, part of a combined $2.6 billion haul alongside bitcoin funds.
$1.04 billion — Crypto card spending in July, more than triple a year ago, with stablecoins funding 70% of the transactions.
$8.5 million — Estimated loss from a governance exploit at DeFi lender Term Finance this week, a reminder leverage isn't the only risk in a rally.
Hot topic
What the community is discussing
The moment itself, and the replies underneath it split exactly the way this week's data does — real breakout, or still no regulatory clarity.
The open question heading into this week: Bitcoin above $70,000 while the Fed is not reaching for cuts — real risk-on, or a squeeze that fades.
Dispatch is a weekly publication by Nexo, designed to help you navigate and take action in the evolving world of digital assets. To share your Dispatch suggestions and comments, email us at [email protected].