The pressure came from a wider retreat in markets. Global equities slipped in holiday-thinned trading, with US, Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese markets closed, and a gauge of Asian shares falling 0.6% after a five-day run to record highs. Brent crude traded around $79 a barrel, down about 9% on the week, as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz returned to normal under the signed US-Iran deal and eased what had been a historic supply shock.
Attention now turns to talks over Iran’s nuclear program, with Vice President JD Vance saying a 60-day clock to settle the deal’s details has started.
The bigger question hanging over the market is where this cycle goes, and whether the altcoins that usually rally late in a bull run get their turn at all. Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, told CoinDesk he thinks bitcoin is behaving differently this cycle because spot ETFs were approved just before the 2024 halving, the roughly four-yearly event that cuts the rate of new bitcoin issuance, pulling in institutional demand that did not exist before and breaking the old pattern.
The speculative energy that once flowed into altcoins, he said, went instead into “useless memecoins” right after the ETFs launched.