Bitcoin Stalls a Cent Below $80,000 as Altcoins Give Back Weekend Gains

Bitcoin came within a cent of $80,000 on Monday before stalling, extending a rally that has run for four sessions on catalysts that all predate the weekend, while the altcoins that led last week's advance gave back their Sunday peaks.

Nothing new arrived to carry it. No federal agency published a crypto action between Friday and Monday, and the next dated events sit outside the tape: Grayscale's Zcash trust converts to an NYSE Arca-listed ETF on Tuesday, and Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh speaks at Jackson Hole later this week into a rates market pricing a 30% chance of a September increase.

Bitcoin last changed hands at $78,995, up 1.8% over 24 hours and 22.9% over seven days, after trading between $76,718 and $79,955, CoinGecko data shows. Ether was at $2,481, up 0.7% on the day and 29.8% on the week. XRP fell 2.4% to $1.48 while holding a 47.8% weekly gain; Solana rose 1.3% to $96.82; BNB was flat at $704. Total crypto market value stood at $2.68 trillion, down 0.7% over 24 hours, on $128 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 59.1%.

A Cent Short

Bitcoin's high of $79,999.99 on Coinbase left it one cent below a round number it has not traded above since May 15, when it reached $81,650. Monday's close is its highest since May 15, and the token is 37.3% below the $126,080 record it set in October 2025.

The seven-day gain of 22.9% is slightly off Sunday's reading of 23.7%, the strongest rolling week since November 2024. Ether is 29.8% higher over seven days, XRP 47.8% and Solana 27.5%.

Volume tells the other half. Turnover fell to $128 billion from $158 billion on Friday, a 19% decline, as the move slowed.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 73 on Monday, its highest in two weeks, according to Alternative.me. It stood at 29 on Aug. 14 and crossed out of fear on Aug. 20.

Breadth Turns Over

Total crypto market value fell 0.7% while bitcoin rose 1.8%. Eighty of the 123 largest non-stablecoin tokens declined.

The tokens that ran hardest last week fell furthest. Ethena's ENA dropped 7.5% after gaining 84.6% over seven days. Pump.fun's PUMP fell 8.9% against a 67.4% week. Aave slid 5.8% after a 53.7% week, Stacks 3.8% after 85.6%, and Official Trump 10% after 73.9%. Lido DAO's LDO fell 9.5% and Hyperliquid's HYPE 3.7%.

Most peaked Sunday. Zcash closed at $855 on Aug. 23 and traded as high as $888 before ending Monday at $822. XRP closed Sunday at $1.52 against $1.48 on Monday, and ether at $2,516 against $2,481.

DeFi total value locked rose 1.6% over 24 hours to $88.34 billion, DefiLlama data shows. Stablecoin supply grew 0.79% over seven days to $303.1 billion, and its 30-day change turned positive at 0.03% after reading -0.23% on Friday. Net issuance of roughly $2.4 billion on the week amounts to 0.8% of supply.

Zcash Becomes An ETF

Grayscale's Zcash trust begins trading on NYSE Arca on Tuesday under the ticker ZCSH, ending its run as an OTCQX-quoted product and giving the largest gainer of the past week a listed vehicle.

The sponsor said in an 8-K filed Friday that shares "were anticipated to begin trading on NYSE Arca Inc. on or about August 25, 2026 ('Uplisting Date'), under the trading symbol 'ZCSH,' subject to the receipt of certain regulatory approvals." The trust changed its name to The Zcash ETF on Monday and filed a Form 8-A12B registering the shares on the exchange. A prospectus filed the same day states the shares "have been approved for listing on NYSE Arca, Inc." Coinbase Custody holds the assets and Coinbase Inc. acts as prime broker.

ZEC gained 59.4% over seven days to $821.85, the largest weekly move among the 20 biggest tokens, lifting its market value to $13.9 billion. It fell 5% on Monday. The token remains 74% below the $3,192 it reached in October 2016.

The conversion is a change of venue for an existing product rather than a new fund approval. Grayscale filed to convert the trust in November 2025. Two buyers have been accumulating alongside it: Cypherpunk Technologies, whose Zcash treasury The Defiant covered when the Winklevoss twins disclosed it, and DCG, which said in an amended filing it is in non-binding talks to acquire about 200,000 ZEC.

Monero, the other large privacy token and one with no U.S. listed vehicle, gained 2.9% over the same seven days.

Warsh Speaks Into A Hike

The Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole symposium runs Aug. 27-29 on the theme "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy." It is Warsh's first as chair. The bank does not publish its program in advance.

Traders are positioned for tightening. Polymarket put the odds of no change at the Sept. 15-16 meeting at 67.5% and a quarter-point increase at 30.5%, against 1.45% for a cut, on $48.4 million of volume. Kalshi priced a hold at 68 cents and a hike at 32 cents. A cut trades below 2% on both venues.

The July minutes released Aug. 19 showed Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan dissenting in favor of a quarter-point increase, and that "many participants assessed that policy tightening would likely be necessary if inflation did not decline."

The 30-year Treasury yield closed at 5.27% on Friday and the 10-year at 4.74%, both higher than Wednesday's levels after Treasury announced its buyback expansion, according to Federal Reserve data. Equities fell Monday, with the S&P 500 down 0.28% to 7,653 and the Nasdaq Composite down 0.76% to 25,980. Gold rose 1.05% to $4,651 an ounce.

Senate cloture on the CLARITY Act ripens Sept. 15, the day the FOMC begins its meeting. Polymarket traders put the odds of the bill being signed into law in 2026 at 14.5%, and The Defiant reported this month that they had pushed passage odds into 2027.

ETFs Take $1.9 Billion

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $307.5 million on Friday, a fifth consecutive day of inflows that brought the week to $1.92 billion, according to Farside Investors. BlackRock's IBIT accounted for $239.3 million of Friday's total. Spot ether ETFs took in $184 million on Friday and $692.6 million over the week. Monday's figures publish after the U.S. close.

The week reversed the $385.2 million of outflows recorded in the week to Aug. 14.

Aerodrome Takes The Day

Aerodrome was the largest gainer among the 150 biggest tokens after Coinbase launched tokenized US equities on Base, where the DEX holds the deepest pool behind each of the four stock tokens. AERO trades at a $530 million market value against about $266 million of total value locked across its three deployments, DefiLlama data shows. The Defiant covered the launch here.

Lighter's LIT rose 5.2% to $3.52, extending its run to 50.9% over seven days. Founder Vladimir Novakovski holds one of the 43 seats on the CFTC's Innovation Advisory Committee, which met for the first time on Aug. 20. Neither Lighter nor the agency has announced a U.S. perpetuals offering.

Stacks led the week at 85.6% without a discrete catalyst. Its Bitcoin Staking Genesis Bond still begins at Bitcoin block 966,350, expected around Sept. 14, and the project said Friday it had joined a disclosure framework carried on Bloomberg terminals, according to Stacks. Aave's 53.7% week also has no identifiable trigger; its V4 deployment went live in March, and governance activity over the past week covered routine parameter changes. Aave's TVL rose to $17.89 billion from $14.95 billion on Aug. 18, most of it collateral repricing.

Trump Token Gives Back

Official Trump fell hardest after the week's third-largest gain. No project news accompanied either move.

World Liberty Financial's WLFI and MemeCore's M were among the few tokens down over seven days, at 4.8% and 3.2%. MemeCore rose 0.9% on Monday and has not addressed the origin of the 925,925,926 tokens that Nasdaq-listed ZeroStack said last week it received in a $1 billion transaction, a figure matching the increase in M's circulating supply recorded on Aug. 19.

Prices and market data as of 5:13 p.m. ET on Aug. 24, 2026.