Bitcoin (BTC) is starting the new week at around $63,000, but bear-market history continues to repeat with weekly close below a key long-term trend line.

Key points:

• Bitcoin has been trading in a range between $57,700 and $67,300, but last week’s close came with a drop below the key 200-week moving average at $64,216.
• Markets are pricing in near-70% odds of a hold by the Federal Reserve in September, as July meeting minutes are due this week.
• Japan Q2 GDP figures fall short of expectations at 1.1% as analysis warns of “global tightening” that could impact Bitcoin and risk assets. 

Bitcoin sees weekly close below 200-week moving average

Bitcoin price action enjoyed a modest rebound after Sunday’s weekly close, seeing local highs of $63,655 on Bitstamp.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Data from TradingView shows BTC/USD continuing to tread water as the week begins, failing to challenge either side of a narrow trading range.

Analyst Benjamin Cowen, however, drew attention to the fact that BTC/USD is now back below its 200-week simple moving average (SMA). As Cointelegraph reported, this moving average was a defining feature in the 2022 bear market, when it turned resistance in August before BTC entered its long-term bottoming phase.

“What is interesting is how in both summer 2022/2026, Bitcoin capitulated below the 200W SMA, then bounced, then gave it up in mid-August,” he wrote in a post on X.

BTC/USD one-week chart with 200 SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Commenting, trader and analyst Rekt Capital added that price had failed to reach his own weekly-close target of $63,220, thus positioning for further downside in future.

“A rejection from $63,220 would fully confirm the breakdown and send price lower within the current ~$58,000-$66,000 Range (blue-blue)” he told X followers alongside an explanatory chart.

BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com

Fed minutes due amid policy dissent

Friday sees the release of preliminary Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data for the manufacturing and services sectors. The data has recently been in an uptrend diverging from relatively weak employment figures, which have seen several months of downward revisions. 

Last week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) releases, meanwhile, painted a softer-than-expected picture of US inflation trends.  This sparked a rethink on future interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. 

The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool shows near-70% odds that the Fed will hold rates at their current 3.50-3.75% range, compared with 42% odds a month ago.

Fed target-rate probability comparison for September FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group

“A pair of reports showing moderating inflation is helping keep the outlook for monetary policy from turning too hawkish,” trading resource Mosaic Asset Company summarized in analysis released on Sunday.

Mosaic noted that while CPI came in at 3.4% year-on-year, this was still far above the Fed’s 2% target — a goal that chair Kevin Warsh continues to state will be achieved. On Wednesday, the Fed will publish the minutes of its July meeting.  Rate hikes were paused in the prior meeting with the largest split among officials over the move since 1970.

Last week, Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank president Beth Hammack, who was one of three dissenting voices calling for a 0.25% rate hike in July, questioned whether public patience would tolerate it if the return to 2% rates took several years.

“Maybe we’d get there, but if it takes another three to four years to get there, is that OK? Is that enough?” she said at an event with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce in Kettering, Ohio, quoted by Bloomberg.

Japan on the radar as GDP disappoints

Japan’s central bank is on the radar for risk-asset traders this week after Q2 GDP figures significantly missed expectations. Quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year GDP increased 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively — below the anticipated 0.5% and 2.0%.

The timing of the print comes as markets see the Bank of Japan (BoJ) hiking rates from current 1.0% levels in September amid surging bond yields and continued weakening in the yen. Previously, Cointelegraph reported on a rare joint intervention in yen currency markets by Japan and the US after JPY/USD weakened to new 40-year lows.

BoJ interest-rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: RateProbability

The GDP print, meanwhile, included the first drop in private consumption in eight quarters, signaling that existing stimulus measures were failing to prop up consumer confidence.

“The boost to consumption from policy measures is already fading, and inflation will increase in H2 as firms will pass on increased costs, deteriorating consumers’ purchasing power,” Norihiro Yamaguchi, lead Japan economist at Oxford Economics, told CNBC.

The yen avoided major volatility on the back of the GDP data, lingering near 159 per dollar on Monday.

USD/JPY four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Responding to the aftermath, Axel Adler Jr., a contributor to onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, noted potential implications for risk assets to come. Japan’s 10-year bond yield hit 2.93% on Monday, its highest levels since 1996.

“For now, this is not a signal to sell risk assets. But the market is approaching an important point: JGB > 3% + further BOJ rate hikes + a stronger yen + rising US Treasury yields,” he wrote in an X post. 

“If these factors align, Japan’s rate normalization could turn into a global tightening of financial conditions and hit stocks and Bitcoin.”

Japan 10-year bond yields one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin forgotten as consumer sentiment lows contrast with stocks gains

Rising stocks paired with record-low consumer sentiment are flashing a new warning sign for Bitcoin, which is increasingly being overlooked.

In the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Week Onchain, crypto analytics platform Glassnode revealed a striking divergence between Bitcoin and equities in terms of sentiment.

“Consumer Confidence remains among the weakest readings of the past decade even after two consecutive improvements, while the US Stock Market Index set a fresh all-time high on August 7 and holds just beneath it,” it summarized.

The softer US inflation prints helped send the S&P 500 to all-time highs of 7,816 on Thursday. At the same time, the consumer sentiment survey by the University of Michigan is expected to drop 7.6% in August.

“Weak sentiment next to record prices looks like a contradiction until the driver is named: households that expect living costs to rise and the economy to soften are moving out of cash and into assets. The equity market, carried above all by the AI trade, is where that capital lands,” Glassnode commented.

US consumer sentiment data. Source: University of Michigan

Bitcoin continues to be left out of this capital rotation. A sign of change, Glassnode argued, would be a sustained rebound in institutional inflows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Last week, these saw net outflows of $267.2 million, per data from UK-based investment company Farside Investors. Just one out of five trading days finished with net inflows, totaling a mere $7.8 million.

US spot Bitcoin ETF netflows (screenshot). Source: Farside Investors

Exchange BTC reserves grow with whale inflows in focus

Bitcoin supply dynamics are the latest troubling feature for its price trajectory, CryptoQuant analysis reports.

Related: Here’s what happened in crypto today

Whales have started to dominate exchange inflows, exacerbating an existing absence of retail interest and causing exchange BTC reserves to reverse higher. Binance’s whale ratio reached 0.71 on Aug. 10, its highest since early March. 

“Exchange deposits do not necessarily mean immediate selling, but they increase the amount of BTC available for trading or hedging,” CryptoQuant commented.

Binance exchange whale ratio. Source: CryptoQuant

Binance’s BTC reserves totaled 674,332 BTC on Sunday, up 2.57% month-to-date and at their highest since November 2025.

“The long-running trend of BTC leaving exchanges may therefore be weakening,” CryptoQuant continued.

Binance BTC reserves. Source: CryptoQuant

As Cointelegraph reported, exchange activity has been driven by derivatives markets as BTC/USD trades in a tight range since early June. On Binance, futures trading volume was eight times that of spot markets in early August.

Bitcoin (BTC) returned to $64,000 after Monday’s Wall Street open as US stocks gave way to gold.

Key points:

• Bitcoin continues a rebound from Sunday’s weekly close, gaining 2% on Monday.
• Oil stays steady after US president Donald Trump threatens to bomb Oman over the Strait of Hormuz.
• Bitcoin funding rates hit 20-month highs of 0.022 last week, data reveals. 

Bitcoin inches up as US-Iran rhetoric spreads to Oman

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD up by more than 2% on the day, rebounding from Sunday’s weekly close. 

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

US equities turned lower as an agreed 60-day ceasefire between the US and Iran was set to expire, with the S&P 500 index down 0.5% from Thursday’s all-time highs. 

S&P 500 one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Speaking to Fox News, Trump threatened Oman with military action amid an ongoing dispute over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz oil route.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s*** out of them,” he told the network.

Oil markets appeared unfazed by the tensions, with WTI crude flat at $82.35 per barrel at the time of writing.

Safe haven gold was more volatile, gaining just over 1% to start the week to reach a daily high of $4,427 per ounce. Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on a combination of retail and government interest fueling gold’s multiweek highs.

XAU/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Data from investment research platform Bytetree tracking the 30-day change in inflows to gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) put the figure at nearly $12 billion through Aug. 13.

In a note on Monday quoted by Investing.com, Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett wrote that long gold remained the trade, describing it as “still [sic] best hedge against dollar debasement, bond collapse, asset inflation, capitalist populism vs socialist populism politics of 2020s.”

Related: BTC price loses 200-week trend line as 2022 repeats: Five things to know in Bitcoin this week

Funding rates hit levels not seen since late 2024

In its latest Market Color bulletin published on Monday, trading company QCP Capital noted Bitcoin’s continued ability to weather macro tailwinds without a major breakdown from its current range.

“Rather than treating individual price levels as directional signals, the more useful observation is that BTC remains close to the lower end of its recent range. A sustained move outside that range would provide more information about market positioning than the relatively contained moves seen within it,” it wrote.

Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on expectations that a return to $61,000 would trigger an unwinding of BTC long positions, adding to downside BTC price momentum.

The latest data from CoinGlass showed liquidations remaining muted as BTC/USD returned toward $64,000, with 24-hour cross-crypto liquidations at $180 million.

Crypto liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass

In a sign of long BTC becoming an increasingly crowded trade, derivatives market funding rates hit 20-month highs of 0.022 on Aug. 14, per data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant.

“The derivatives market sentiment is positive within the current BTC price range, indicating that most traders are taking long positions,” it commented on the readings.

CryptoQuant previously noted that futures trading volume on Binance was outweighing spot markets by almost eight times.

Bitcoin funding rates chart. Source: CryptoQuant

The US Department of the Treasury issued a notice of proposed rulemaking related to the implementation of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, a bill to establish a framework for payment stablecoins signed into law last year.

In a Monday notice, the Treasury Department said that it was opening a proposed rule up to public comment ahead of the January 2027 implementation of the GENIUS Act. Under the terms of the bill, the stablecoin law had been scheduled to go into effect 120 days after agencies finalize rules, or 18 months after it was passed in July 2025, making its effective date Jan. 18, 2027. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the department “welcomes input from stakeholders as [it works] to provide the regulatory certainty businesses need to innovate and grow in America.” 

Together with the Treasury Department, other US government agencies including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board have issued notices of proposed rules in 2026 related to the implementation of GENIUS. However, all departments reportedly missed the 120-day deadline in July to finalize regulations before January, signaling that GENIUS could go into effect without clear guidance.

Related: Wise to resubmit US bank charter application under GENIUS Act

According to Treasury, once the GENIUS Act goes into effect, an entity generally may not “issue a payment stablecoin” in the US without a related federal or state license. Public comment on the department’s proposed rules is open for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register.

US-UK regulators discuss GENIUS progress

In July, the UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group met in London to discuss cooperation between the two country’s financial agencies, including implementation of the GENIUS Act.

Although UK authorities have taken steps to address stablecoin regulation, the pending implementation of GENIUS has some crypto industry insiders arguing the country is falling behind the US.

Magazine: Data of 54,000 wallet users leaked, CLARITY odds just 10%: Hodler’s Digest

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Tom Lee’s Bitmine Immersion Technologies has restarted a steady program of Ethereum treasury buying, adding 9,926 ETH during the week ending Aug. 16. The company says the purchase brings its Ether holdings to roughly 5.82 million ETH—about 4.8% of Ethereum’s circulating supply—putting it close to its long-term goal of owning 5% of the asset’s total supply.

In its disclosure, Bitmine also provided valuation context: at an ETH reference price of $1,893, the latest portfolio total is worth about $11 billion. But the company notes that many of its ETH were acquired at significantly higher prices, underscoring how difficult the prolonged bear market has been for Ethereum treasury strategies.

Key takeaways

• Bitmine bought 9,926 ETH for the week ending Aug. 16, lifting holdings to about 5.82 million ETH (around 4.8% of circulating supply).
• At a reference price of $1,893, Bitmine’s Ether stake is valued near $11 billion, though acquisition costs are substantially higher for a large portion of the position.
• Industry data cited by DropsTab estimates unrealized losses of more than $8.4 billion on the current ETH treasury.
• Despite the drawdown, Bitmine continues to stake more than 5 million ETH, which it says is generating protocol rewards.
• Bitmine’s staking yield was reported at 2.61% over seven days, implying roughly $287 million in annualized staking rewards, according to Tom Lee.

Restarting the “Alchemy of 5%” push

Bitmine’s strategy is built around scale and patience. After resuming purchases last week, the company is now within reach of its “Alchemy of 5%” target: holding 5% of Ethereum’s total supply. That target matters because it signals a treasury model designed to treat Ether as a long-duration bet rather than a tactical trading position.

According to Bitmine’s disclosure, the latest weekly buy also helps explain why the company continues to frame its program as a process rather than a series of opportunistic trades. The reported accumulation keeps the company moving toward a specific ownership threshold—one that would materially increase its influence and relevance as an institutional holder in Ethereum’s expanding ecosystem.

Unrealized losses remain a pressure point

The renewed buying comes even as Ether’s market environment has tested Bitmine’s conviction. The company is reported to be sitting on more than $8.4 billion in unrealized losses on its ETH holdings, based on industry data cited by DropsTab. DropsTab’s estimate places Bitmine’s unrealized losses at around 43% relative to the company’s reported acquisition costs, despite the current portfolio value being above $11 billion.

That mismatch—between the size of the position and the magnitude of drawdowns—highlights a key risk for any “buy-and-hold” treasury plan executed through a full market cycle. Even when a strategy is long-term, the path matters: buying during a downtrend can create large paper losses that only reverse if market prices recover meaningfully.

Staking helps fund the wait

What differentiates Bitmine’s approach from a simple spot accumulation strategy is its ongoing staking operation. The company said it is staking more than 5 million ETH, which it values at roughly $9.6 billion at current prices. By staking, Bitmine earns protocol rewards for helping secure the network—providing a source of yield that can partially offset the emotional and financial pressure of unrealized drawdowns.

Bitmine’s filing also links its staking activity to a measurable performance indicator. Based on a seven-day staking yield of 2.61%, Tom Lee projects annualized staking rewards of roughly $287 million. While annualized estimates can fluctuate—since staking yields depend on network conditions and how rewards are distributed—the point for investors is clear: Bitmine’s treasury is not entirely exposed to price movement. A portion of its return profile is tied to staking economics rather than only to Ether’s market direction.

Still, staking does not remove the core uncertainty. If Ether’s price does not recover, unrealized losses can remain large even while protocol rewards accrue. Conversely, if Ether rebounds, staking rewards can accelerate the path toward a healthier overall position—both in absolute returns and relative to acquisition costs.

Why steady accumulation is notable now

Bitmine’s restart of weekly Ether purchases suggests the company is treating the current phase of the market as compatible with its long-term ownership targets. Earlier coverage noted that Bitmine has continued accumulating Ether through weekly buys since launching its ETH treasury strategy in June 2025. In that context, the latest addition looks less like a reaction to short-term price action and more like execution of a defined roadmap.

For market observers, that matters because large treasury actions can act as a counterpoint to narratives that institutional interest fades during downturns. Even when unrealized losses mount, Bitmine appears willing to keep buying as it approaches its 5% target—while using staking yield to keep the strategy funded.

There is, however, an important asymmetry to watch. As Bitmine nears the 5% level, further buying can become harder depending on remaining supply dynamics and how the company structures future deployment. The company’s near-term challenge may shift from “can it keep accumulating?” to “how does it manage valuation risk and portfolio efficiency as its position grows?”

Next, investors and traders will likely focus on whether Bitmine can sustain weekly accumulation while Ethereum staking yields remain stable enough to support the projected reward rate. Just as importantly, readers should watch how fast the market price of Ether moves relative to Bitmine’s acquisition costs—because staking can soften the drawdown, but only a meaningful price recovery can fully relieve the unrealized loss picture.