Bitcoin eased to around $79,400 in Asian morning hours Thursday, down almost 1% on the day, after briefly trading above $80,000 for the first time since May.
XRP fell hardest among the majors, down almost 3% to $1.424, while holding a 28% weekly gain that still leads the group. Hyperliquid's HYPE slipped over 1% to just under $81 and Tron under 1% to just above 33 cents.
Solana ran against the move, up almost 4% to just above $101 and 19% on the week. Ether added 1% to just under $2,494, BNB almost 1% to just under $703, and Dogecoin held at just under 9 cents.
Weekly Gains Narrow as the Rolling Window Passes Last Week's Surge
Weekly gains have compressed sharply as the seven-day window moves past the initial breakout. Bitcoin's seven-day gain has fallen to 14% from 23% a day earlier, and ether's to 11% from 29%.
That is arithmetic rather than deterioration. The surge from $62,000 is rolling out of the comparison window, which mechanically reduces the trailing figure even on flat price action. The relevant question is what happens from here, not what the trailing number reads.
Treasury Yields Move Against the Rally as Hike Bets Build
Rate expectations are turning against the move. Shorter-dated Treasuries fell overnight as traders added to bets on a rate increase — cutting directly against the lower-yield backdrop that lifted Bitcoin from below $68,000 last week.
That backdrop was the rally's foundation. Treasury Secretary Bessent's bond buyback expansion pushed yields and the dollar lower, cracking a six-week range. If shorter-dated yields are now rising on hike expectations, the first link in that chain is reversing.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote as chair on Friday, three weeks before the September 15-16 rate decision. MUFG's Derek Halpenny expects limited forward guidance and has warned the long end could face renewed pressure absent credible fiscal consolidation measures.
LMAX's Kruger Puts the Next Confirmation Level at $82,820
Joel Kruger, markets strategist at LMAX Group, said technical measures are in overbought territory on daily charts — but that severely overbought conditions do not always unwind through a major reversal.
He put the next confirmation level at the May high near $82,820, a break above which would open the way back toward $100,000.
That level sits above the 50-week moving average at $81,085, where Bitcoin was rejected earlier in the week after an intraday high of $81,265. The sequence is coherent: reclaim the 200-day, stall at the 50-week, then confirm at the May high. Bitcoin at $79,400 has cleared the first and faces the second.
QCP Capital Says Open Interest Points to Short Covering, Not Fresh Buying
Singapore-based QCP Capital said in a Telegram broadcast that falling open interest points to short covering rather than fresh buying, with spot ETF inflows supplying the genuine demand.
"With liquidity support limited, is this rally becoming structural — or still running on borrowed time?" the firm concluded.
The observation matches the data. Bitcoin futures open interest fell to a two-month low of 715,000 BTC even as price rallied 24%. Falling open interest into a rising price means shorts are closing and no new leveraged longs are replacing them.
QCP's framing is the sharper version of the read. Short covering is finite — it exhausts when the short book clears. What remains is the spot bid, and that has been running eight consecutive sessions with roughly $2.8 billion into Bitcoin ETFs, including $232 million Wednesday. Ether funds match the eight-day count with their own streak past $1 billion.
Whether that is sufficient depends on scale. Bitcoin ETFs remain net negative for 2026 by roughly $2.5 billion, meaning August has recovered a little more than half of what left between May and July.
Nvidia Lifts Equities as Asian Chip Names Follow
Equities moved the other way. Nvidia rose almost 5% in extended trading after signalling strong sales growth through 2028, lifting Marvell Technology and SanDisk with it.
The company reported fiscal Q2 revenue of $96.2 billion against $92.27 billion expected, with data center revenue of $89 billion and third-quarter guidance of $108 billion versus $103.9 billion forecast. CEO Jensen Huang said AI has reached its inflection point.
MSCI's Asia Pacific index gained half a percent, led by SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, while South Korea's Kospi rose almost 2% — a meaningful recovery for an index that fell 40% from its June peak on China's DUV lithography breakthrough.
Bitcoin's muted response to the Nvidia beat is consistent with how the two markets have decoupled. Bitcoin gained 23.6% last week while the Nasdaq fell 2%, driven by ETF flows and Treasury dynamics rather than semiconductor sentiment.