Bitcoin jumps 23% in a week, reigniting bull-market bets

Bitcoin has posted a sharp rebound, with research firms pointing to an unprecedented wave of short covering and fresh policy signals from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as forces nudging the market into a new leg of the bull-cycle adjustment, ME News reported on Aug. 26 (UTC+8). Market data show Bitcoin gained about 23% over the past week, its strongest weekly advance since the post-rally rebound that followed the November 2024 U.S. election. Broader crypto trading activity also accelerated: spot and perpetual volumes jumped 188%, while CME Bitcoin futures volume rose 152%. The annualized futures basis climbed to 11.1%, the highest since January 2025. Fund flows strengthened as well. Bitcoin ETFs saw net inflows of roughly 31,740 BTC over the week, the largest weekly intake since the market peak in October 2025. Vetle Lunde, Research Director at K33 Research, said the move was initially powered mainly by short covering. On Aug. 19, Bitcoin short liquidations hit $1.37 billion in a single day, a record, followed by another $739 million on Aug. 21. The squeeze pushed perpetual open interest down to 284,000 BTC, the lowest since May, and drove funding rates back to neutral. On the macro side, analysts are watching Bessent's support for expanding long-term Treasury buybacks. K33 argues a larger buyback program could help pull down long-term yields and lift demand for scarce assets. Cross-asset relationships also shifted. Bitcoin's 90-day correlation with gold rose to 0.52, the highest since October 2020, while its correlation with the Nasdaq fell to 0.38, a one-year low. Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise Asset Management, said Bessent's recent comments on sanctions targeting Iran's financial networks further bolster Bitcoin's investment case: as geopolitics increasingly shapes global finance, decentralized assets that do not depend on any single country's financial infrastructure may gain value. (Source: ODAILY)