Markets Today - August 10, 2026

Daily analysis of crypto markets and the forces shaping them, from the Nexo research desk.

Bitcoin holds above $65,000 as market awaits CPI test following NFP miss

Bitcoin opened the week above $65,000 and the total crypto market cap sits at $2.22 trillion. Markets spent the weekend digesting Friday's jobs miss without committing to a direction. U.S. equity futures point to a quiet, modestly higher open Monday, a muted reaction given the size of Friday's surprise, and Treasury yields and the dollar moved only slightly. Underneath that calm, positioning diverged. Institutional demand kept building steadily through spot ETFs in both BTC and ETH, while SOL and XRP saw fresh leveraged length built in futures instead. Geopolitics added a separate headwind: a stalled Hormuz negotiation kept oil firms working against the dovish reading from the jobs data. Wednesday's U.S. CPI is now the confirmation the market is waiting for before committing to a direction.

Bitcoin
BTC held a tight range around Friday's jobs miss, moving only 0.4% and staying near $65,000 through the weekend. It opened Monday at $65,193, up 3.7% for August but flat since Friday. Spot flow backs the calm. Buying and selling stayed balanced through Aug. 3–7, and futures open interest barely moved despite big swings in volume — traders churned positions rather than adding new exposure. 

Options tell the same story. Put open interest grew relative to calls, but the cost of that protection actually fell as short-dated volatility eased, a sign of steady positioning rather than urgent hedging. The one exception is spot ETF demand, which kept building regardless. BTC ETFs registered five straight days of inflows from Aug. 3–7 totaling $853.5 million, their best weekly haul since the week of April 13. But that steady accumulation hasn't translated into price conviction just yet and BTC still hasn't broken out of its range. The setup into Wednesday's CPI is caution, not conviction: real demand is building quietly underneath a market that isn't yet willing to move on it.

Ethereum & Altcoins
Altcoin leverage is where the incremental move is this week, though the build is moderate rather than extreme. SOL and XRP's open interest both climbed since Friday, while BTC and ETH stayed flat. SOL is up over 4% since Friday to $76.85, with its funding rate rising from an unusually depressed Friday low to around the 90th percentile of its past three months by Monday. XRP made a smaller price move to $1.036 but showed the same pattern, with funding climbing from near zero to a similarly elevated, though not historically stretched, level. ETH told a different story. It opened Monday at $1,912, still stuck in its recent $1,840–$1,930 range, with funding flat and low the entire weekend, notably below the range ETH's own funding typically runs in.

Institutional demand for ETH exposure picked up sharply after a weak stretch in late July. Spot ETH ETFs ran negative or in the single digits for several days through Aug. 3, then pulled in $53.75 million, $60.86 million, $92.15 million, and $49.60 million on Aug. 4–7, while SOL, XRP, and HYPE ETF flows stayed flat. That split matters heading into Wednesday's CPI. A leveraged alt rally that hasn't yet stretched into extreme territory still has room to run if sentiment holds, but it remains more exposed to a reversal than ETH's quieter, spot-driven, ETF-backed move if the print disappoints.

Macro & Institutional
Following last week's weaker-than-expected jobs data, the U.S. labor market looks considerably shakier than previously assumed. Nonfarm payrolls fell 23,000 in July, versus consensus for an 80,000 gain — the first negative headline print since February. May and June were revised down a combined 103,000, and the unemployment rate slipped to 4.1% from 4.2%, though analysts flagged the drop as a participation-rate artifact rather than a sign of strength. Markets read the miss as reducing the odds of a Fed rate hike next month, with CME FedWatch pricing hike odds for the September FOMC meeting at 44%, down from 67% a week ago. 

The Nasdaq 100 led gains Friday, closing up 1.19%, while the S&P rose 0.62% and the Dow 0.28% — a reaction analysts called muted relative to the size of the miss, arguing investors read it as a growth warning rather than benign Goldilocks weakness. Treasury yields eased only modestly and the dollar softened, but neither move matched the scale of the payrolls surprise. Geopolitics remain the key variable for both the inflation outlook and any broader risk-on rally. Hopes for a near-term Hormuz resolution were dented Monday after Tehran issued a formal list of demands as preconditions for reopening the strait. Brent crude rose 0.5% to $83.95 a barrel on the news, underscoring how much leverage Iran still holds over global energy supply.

Looking Ahead
U.S. CPI, due Wednesday, is the print that matters most this week. With oil still elevated on an unresolved Hormuz standoff, a hot number would confirm the Fed stays boxed in by price pressure even as jobs soften. The key swing factor is whether Iran and Oman convert their close corridor agreement into an actual reopening — a durable deal would be the cleaner path to easing inflation risk than any single data print. U.S. PPI and jobless claims follow Thursday, adding texture on pipeline pressure and labor cooling before retail sales and consumer sentiment close out the week Friday. Treasury supply stays heavy early to midweek, with 3-Year, 10-Year, and 30-Year auctions testing demand once CPI is known. Beyond the U.S., U.K. Q2 GDP and China's credit data also land Thursday, both relevant to the global growth cross-read.

Author: Dessislava Ianeva, Analyst at Nexo’s Dispatch

This material is produced by Nexo for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice, or a recommendation to transact in any digital asset. Views are the author's as of the date of publication and may change without notice. Information is from sources believed reliable, but Nexo makes no warranty as to its accuracy and accepts no liability for any loss arising from reliance on this material.