Is the bear market finally over?

Friday, August 21, 2026

Bitcoin touched $79,400 overnight — the highest since May — before pulling back to around $77,000 as markets opened Friday. That leaves $80,000 as the immediate test before ETF trading closes for the weekend. This has been bitcoin’s best week since 2023: up 18%, with $4 billion in short positions liquidated across two days. The week’s rally has produced an unexpected Friday morning question: is this how bear markets end, or is it a mechanically driven squeeze that will fade once the forced buying stops? Smart people are genuinely split. U.S. flash PMI data lands today; Jackson Hole — where central bank governors make market-moving speeches — arrives next week. When U.S. markets close, bitcoin enters thinner weekend trading with no ETF bid and Iranian oil tensions still unresolved. Stay alert, and have a good weekend.

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Market snapshot

As of 8am EST

Asset

Price

24h

BTC

$76,975

+7.12%

ETH

$2,350

+5.00%

SOL

$89.80

+5.10%

XRP

$1.18

+3.50%

Prices approximate. Visit coindesk.com/price for live data.

A message from Grayscale

Grayscale Hyperliquid Staking ETF (ticker: HYPG) is the lowest-fee HYPE fund in the U.S.¹ Hyperliquid is emerging as critical infrastructure for onchain markets — a high-performance blockchain that processed nearly $3 trillion in derivatives volume and generated ~$800 million in revenue in 2025, with no venture capital backing.²

Lowest management fee in its category (0.29%)
Over $100 million in AUM³
Potential staking rewards — HYPG seeks to stake 70%+ of its assets; HYPE staking rewards averaged ~2.2% last year.⁴

HYPG, an exchange traded product, is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (“40 Act”), and therefore is not subject to the same regulations and protections as 40 Act registered ETFs and mutual funds. HYPG is subject to significant risk and heightened volatility. HYPG is not suitable for an investor who cannot afford the loss of the entire investment. An investment in HYPG is not a direct investment in HYPE.

Learn more

¹ Lowest-fee HYPE fund in the U.S. based on management fee of 0.29%. Brokerage fees and other expenses may apply.

² Crypto Briefing, December 26, 2025.

³ Bloomberg L.P. as of 6/X/26. Subject to change.

⁴ Stakingrewards.com. Historical daily average measured from 5/1/25 to 04/21/26. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

This information must be preceded or accompanied by a Grayscale Hyperliquid Staking ETF prospectus, which may be obtained by clicking here. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing.

This information should not be relied upon as research, investment advice, or a recommendation regarding any security in particular. Potential staking rewards are earned by the Fund. Staking rewards are not guaranteed and should not be considered an indication of Fund performance. The Fund’s ability to engage in staking is conditional and may be modified. Staking requires that the Fund lock up HYPE for the period of time required by the staking protocol, meaning the Fund cannot sell or transfer the staked HYPE, thereby making it illiquid for the period it is being staked. Foreside Fund Services, LLC is the Marketing Agent for the Fund. © 2026 Grayscale.

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What matters today

Markets

Story 1 of 3

Bitcoin faces an $80,000 test as thinner weekend liquidity looms.

Bitcoin entered Friday’s U.S. session trading near $77,000 after briefly reaching $79,400 overnight — the highest level since May — making $80,000 the immediate test before ETF trading closes for the weekend. Spot U.S. bitcoin ETFs posted net inflows of $606 million on Thursday, the most since May 1, and Friday’s session is tracking higher still. Weekly inflows are on track for the strongest since October. CoinShares’ head of research James Butterfill described $80,000 as “an important boundary” for bitcoin, adding that a decisive move through it will likely require confirmation that Federal Reserve policy is moving away from tightening — confirmation that could emerge at next week’s Jackson Hole symposium, where Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and other central bank governors are scheduled to speak. Before then, U.S. flash PMI readings today could move yields and the dollar, both of which matter for bitcoin’s next direction. Butterfill flagged a structural caution: “With accumulation by large holders still modest in scale, the market lacks the depth of conviction that typically underpins a durable breakout.” The rally is “primarily a macro story rather than a crypto-specific one,” he said. When U.S. markets close, bitcoin passes into thinner weekend trading without the ETF bid and more vulnerable to geopolitical developments in the Gulf. Strategy, which had been sitting on an $8 billion unrealized loss earlier this month, is now sitting on a $1.4 billion unrealized profit as BTC crossed above the company’s average purchase price. The ETHBTC ratio is also notable: the ratio is above its 50-week exponential moving average and testing a key resistance level at 0.03 — a clean break above that level would historically signal sustained ETH outperformance over bitcoin.

Markets

Story 2 of 3

Analysts are split on whether bitcoin’s surge past key levels signals a new bull run.

Bitcoin’s sudden move toward $80,000 this week has produced a genuine disagreement among seasoned market watchers about what it actually means. In one corner: Mati Greenspan of Quantum Economics, who said “this is generally what bottoms look like — they begin with a short squeeze, a giant green candle, start breaking above technical levels, and suddenly everyone waiting for BTC at $40,000 is rethinking their strategy.” He sees FOMO accelerating from here and put the odds of a significant pullback as “very slim.” In the other: Jason Fernandes of AdLunam, who warned against calling the end of the bear market “without sustained spot ETF inflows and clear macroeconomic rate easing.” His concern is that bitcoin could run out of steam at the $75,000–$76,000 overhead resistance. The mechanics of the rally add important context to the debate. Adam Morgan McCarthy of LO:TECH offered the sharpest read: more than half of Wednesday’s 7.1% gain landed inside a single hour on about a third of the day’s volume. Binance traded $1.26 billion of bitcoin futures in a single 60-second window — 361 times a normal minute. That is not organic demand; it is the signature of a short squeeze, where forced buying cascades. McCarthy pointed to gold as the week’s cleaner macro signal: it rallied on the Treasury doubling bond buybacks without any of the forced-buying distortion that inflated bitcoin’s price. “If you’re looking for where investors are actually hedging against currency and inflation risk this week, gold shows it, and bitcoin doesn’t,” he said. Tobias Bauer of TBV added that the funding rate on bitcoin futures has now hit exchange maximums, meaning the cost of holding a leveraged long position has become expensive — a typical signal that the crowd has positioned strongly in one direction and the trade is getting crowded.

Markets

Story 3 of 3

Bitcoin, ether and solana climb as another $1 billion in shorts gets wiped out.

A second consecutive wave of forced short closures swept through crypto markets in Asian trading Friday, liquidating roughly $1 billion in bearish positions out of $1.23 billion in total, across 140,416 individual traders. That follows the $3 billion wiped out on Thursday — the largest single-day short liquidation on record going back to 2021 — bringing the two-day total to more than $4 billion. The largest single position closed in Friday’s Asian session was a $25.13 million bitcoin trade on Hyperliquid. To understand what these numbers mean: a liquidation happens when a trader borrows to make a larger bet than their capital alone would cover, the market moves against them, and the exchange automatically closes the position before losses exceed the margin posted. These were traders who bet the price would fall — each forced closure required buying bitcoin to exit, which pushed prices higher and created further cascading liquidations. Bitcoin climbed to just under $75,500 overnight before pulling back to $77,000 by the time U.S. markets opened; two days ago it was trading near $64,100, a move of nearly 20% in 48 hours. The altcoin rally has been broad and in some cases has exceeded bitcoin’s gains. Ether added roughly 5% in the latest session to $2,350 and is up 24.5% on the week. Hyperliquid’s HYPE leads the majors at roughly 27% on the week, topping $73. Solana traded near $90, up 17% on the week. Dogecoin gained about 9% in the session. BNB rose 6% to $660. Tron lagged. The rally traces to Wednesday, when the U.S. Treasury doubled the size of its long-end bond buyback operations from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation, easing conditions across the roughly $30 trillion Treasury market and lifting appetite for risk assets globally. Bitcoin then broke through resistance near $66,600, the level that had capped the price since early July. Bitcoin’s total market value stands at $1.5 trillion — still about 40% below the record above $126,000 set last October.