The signs of a bull market appear

In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:

• Crypto majors’ trends
• Banks make a blockchain
• Everybody buys BTC

Market cast

BTC: Daily chart cools, but trend holds

Bitcoin's weekly chart keeps its bullish tilt, with price hovering around the 50-period SMA. The RSI, a momentum oscillator, is rising, and the Stochastic, another momentum oscillator, sits in overbought territory without yet showing signs of exhaustion, while the MACD, a trend and momentum indicator, keeps its histogram deep in positive territory and still climbing.

The daily chart has entered a brief consolidation after the run higher, though the broader bullish tone holds. Both the RSI and Stochastic are in overbought territory, and the next few sessions should show whether that momentum is starting to fade — the MACD histogram is already declining on this timeframe. The ADX, which measures trend strength, sits at very high levels and continues to rise, a sign the underlying trend remains intact even as momentum cools.

Key levels to watch: on the downside, immediate support sits around $77,000, with the next level near $75,000. To the upside, resistance comes in around $80,000, followed by $82,000, with the weekly 50-period SMA also acting as dynamic resistance along the way.

The big idea

Is a bull market forming for crypto?

Last week's price action didn't move in a straight line: Bitcoin held its ground while Solana cooled after a bullish vote, Ether worked back toward a level it lost in January, and XRP eased off its own run higher. That's more optimism than the summer earned, but it isn't proof of a turn yet – whether it becomes one comes down, mostly, to the Fed, at least for now. Worth inspecting first: where each of these assets actually sits, and what could still provide the next leg up.

Bitcoin – holding on to gains: BlackRock's Robbie Mitchnick frames the rally – helped along by the Treasury's bond buybacks and talk of a government Bitcoin purchase – as Bitcoin's "risk-off" narrative reasserting itself, a fiscal-hedge trade rather than pure risk appetite. That matters more than the $81,455 high. CryptoQuant still wants a close above $83,100 before calling this an "official" bull phase, and some holders have already booked $1.2 billion in gains – a reminder the move is due a breather. What that means for Bitcoin's longer-term price targets gets its own space later in this issue.

Ethereum – A signal, not yet a trend: Ether's 50-day moving average crossed above its 200-day this week – a "golden cross," the kind of setup that has preceded sustained bullish phases before, though it guarantees nothing. Tom Lee's Bitmine kept buying through the move, adding 32,447 ETH last week, followed by another 53,501 ETH on Monday and narrowing its unrealized losses from $8.4 billion to under $5 billion. The catch: Ether is testing its 200-week average for the first time since breaking below it in January, and hasn't cleared it convincingly yet.

XRP – Whales ahead of the price: Whale wallets added roughly 460 million XRP during last week's pullback, the largest such build since February – a pattern that has preceded past rallies. The price hasn't confirmed it: a three-day pullback took XRP back toward $1.40 on profit-taking after an overheated run to $1.70. Regulatory clarity, via the CLARITY Act's continued progress, remains part of the case even where the chart isn't cooperating.

Solana – structural, not the chart: The real signal isn't the price. Institutions bought Solana through a bear market – the staking ETF crossed $1 billion in assets while still down 40% from listing – and validators just voted through a permanent cut to future supply, doubling the network's disinflation rate by the tightest possible margin. SOL falling from $109 to $105 the day the vote passed is noise against that; on-chain fundamentals and price don't always move together in the short run.

Strip away the daily noise and two things hold up: Bitcoin is behaving less like a risk asset, and Solana's validators just voted through real scarcity. Ether's retest, XRP's pullback, and Solana's sell-the-news reaction are short-term positioning, not reversals of the trend. The thesis breaks if Bitcoin's Nasdaq correlation snaps back, if Ether's golden cross fails to hold, or if this week's labor data revives September hike odds. Any one of those would mean the optimism was unearned after all. More on that below.

TradFi trends

39 Banks, one blockchain

Thirty-nine state banking associations have formed the BankChain Alliance, a coalition building a shared, industry-owned blockchain network for community and regional banks. The proposed system would support tokenized deposits, stablecoins, programmable payments, and automated settlement, targeting a 2027 launch. The alliance hasn't named a technology provider, disclosed its underlying blockchain, or detailed how deposits and stablecoins would actually be issued and settled – governance is modeled loosely on the Federal Home Loan Bank system. It joins a growing list of bank-led tokenization efforts, following JPMorgan's own deposit token, BNY's permissioned tokenized-deposit platform, and a Swift-led pilot with 17 global banks testing after-hours settlement.

Macroeconomic roundup

The Fed goes quiet, the data won't

At Jackson Hole last week, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh used his first major address to explain why he won't tell markets what comes next – forward guidance, he said, has "overstayed its welcome." What he did confirm: inflation remains the Fed's "predominant focus," and the central bank still has "work to do." This week's run of labor data is what fills in the blank he left – and if it comes in weaker than expected, that would tone down fears of a September hike rather than stoke them.

JOLTS Job Openings (Sept 1): July's read on labor demand. Soft eases hike concerns further; a surprise pickup hands hawks fresh ammunition.

ADP Employment (Sept 2): August's private-payrolls read, the last major print before Friday. Weakness here builds on the same case.

Nonfarm Payrolls, Unemployment Rate, and Average Hourly Earnings (Sept 4): August's readings on all three, landing together at 12:30 UTC – the week's most consequential print for the Fed's next move. Weak takes a hike off the table; strong keeps it alive.

CME FedWatch puts the odds of a September hike at over 60%, up from 35% before Warsh spoke but still well below the roughly 82% priced in a month ago. Softer labor numbers this week are what would pull that number back down – and give the crypto rally covered at the top of this issue room to keep going.

The week's most interesting data story

Small wallets, big wallets, same trade

Every wallet-size cohort is buying at once. Glassnode's accumulation trend score has held above the neutral 0.5 line across all six Bitcoin holder cohorts for 20 straight days since August 5 – the most persistent all-cohort accumulation since a 22-day run in late 2024. The move has been funded the whole way: $2.23 billion in ETF creations over the past week, with coins flowing off exchanges and up the size ladder into institutional custody. Larger wallets led the initial move; smaller wallets have built their positions steadily through the month rather than chasing the spike. The rally has also stayed narrow so far – large caps have meaningfully outperformed smaller ones – and a single cohort slipping back below the 0.5 line would be the first sign that the breadth behind this move is narrowing.

The numbers

The week’s most interesting numbers

$150,000 – Bernstein's base-case Bitcoin target by mid-2027, on the way to $300,000 by 2029.

$2.8 billion – Strategy's paper profit on its 840,447 BTC as Bitcoin climbed to $79,007 on Sunday, prompting Saylor's "We're Back" post.

18.9 million – fewer SOL to be issued over the next six years after Solana validators voted to double the network's disinflation rate.

3% — the yield on Japan's 10-year government bond, its highest level since 1996, as a bond selloff keeps global rates in focus.

$217 million — Net inflows back into US spot bitcoin ETFs on Monday, resuming buying after Friday's one-day outflow snapped a nine-day streak.

Hot topic

What the community is discussing

Markets are returning from summer holiday?

Is an altcoin season in the making?

Will SOL do its own catching up?

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].