August 11, 2026, 11:00 UTC | @dailyanalysts
| Asset | Price | 24h | 7d | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | $64,178 | -1.21% | ~flat/+1% | 4th failed close above $65,000 |
| ETH | $1,885 | -1.65% | modestly positive | Weakest major on the day |
| SOL | $75.88 | -1.15% | +3% | Best-performing major this week |
| XRP | $1.005 | -2.60% | ~-6% | Worst major; threatening to break $1 for first time since 2024 |
| ADA | $0.188 | -3.62% | negative | Giving back August's whale-driven rally |
| DOGE | $0.0705 | +0.80% | flat | One of only three majors green today |
| AVAX | $6.49 | -0.43% | flat | Leading today's open-interest losers |
Total crypto market cap: $2.279T (-0.97% 24h), BTC dominance 56.5%. Fear & Greed Index: 29 (Fear) — has not left the Fear zone since mid-July.
Bitcoin has tested $65,000 for four straight days without a sustained break, but FxPro's Alex Kuptsikevich reads the failure correctly: there's no surge of selling into the level, which points to short positions building above resistance rather than longs taking profit. The next real level is $70,000 — bitcoin's 200-day moving average and the top of the range that traded hands all through March-April. Clear it, and sentiment shifts meaningfully; fail again, and the range holds.
On-chain data currently favors the bulls, tactically. Santiment reports that bitcoin wallets holding 10,000+ BTC have climbed to 90, a six-month high — up six wallets (+7.1%) in eight weeks. Since July 29, the broader 10–10,000 BTC "whale and shark" cohort has absorbed $1.5 billion in BTC, while "micro" wallets have shrunk steadily through August, spooked by the $120M Coldcard hardware-wallet exploit and the Senate's decision to push the CLARITY Act market-structure bill to September. Historically, this kind of concentration into strong hands has preceded upside moves — Santiment's own framing tilts the odds toward a break above $70,000 rather than a slide below $60,000. Options flow agrees directionally: the most active 24h volume is in the BTC $70,000 call expiring Sept 25 and the $2,000 ETH call for the same date.
But there is a real, mechanical seller working against that setup: Strategy (MSTR) sold BTC for the fourth consecutive week (1,690 BTC on Monday alone) and has not bought a single coin since June — a structural change from its multi-year accumulation identity, now selling to fund STRC preferred dividend obligations. This is not sentiment-driven selling that will exhaust itself on a headline; it's a recurring, calendar-driven supply overhang that shows up every week regardless of what the Fed or CPI say, and it is a large part of why $65,000 keeps failing even as whales accumulate underneath it.
Layered on top: the macro setup flipped hawkish overnight. Hopes for a Strait of Hormuz resolution evaporated after Trump demanded 50 years of compensation from Iran, pushing Brent crude to $89.08 (+12% off last week's low) and reviving inflation risk into Wednesday's 8:30am ET CPI print. Consensus expects headline CPI to ease to 3.4% y/y and core to 2.5%. The 10-year yield sits near 4.66-4.71%, and futures now price only ~44% odds of a September hike (down sharply from 67% a week ago on Friday's weak jobs report) — but a hot CPI print, especially with oil re-accelerating, could quickly rebuild those hike odds and hit risk assets broadly. One-week BTC/ETH options call skew has already started weakening toward negative, a sign dealers are pricing more downside risk into the print than upside.
Riot Platforms disclosed a 20-year, $9.1 billion data-center lease (with two five-year extensions that could push the total to $16.1 billion) with what Bloomberg confirmed is Anthropic — 191 megawatts of IT capacity at Riot's Rockdale, Texas campus, phased in through June 2028. Riot's stock closed down 5.46% on Monday after a Q2 print that showed a $237.2 million net loss despite 14% revenue growth, then surged 25% after-hours once the Anthropic tie-up was confirmed, and was still indicated +20% premarket Tuesday. This is Riot's second major AI compute deal in six months (following a January agreement with AMD); CEO Jason Les says the company has now signed 241 megawatts of leases worth roughly $9.8 billion in contracted revenue with "two of the most important companies in the AI ecosystem."
The mechanism matters more than the headline: Riot's bitcoin-mining revenue was $113.7 million last quarter versus $23.2 million from its nascent data-center business — mining is still the larger line item today, but AI-lease revenue is what the market is now pricing the stock on. This is happening across the miner cohort broadly; it is the same read-through Nvidia's new $500B AI financing consortium and Anthropic's earlier multi-gigawatt compute deals are pushing into the space — cheap, already-energized power is now more valuable rented to AI labs than deployed into ASICs. CoinDesk's own framing calls this correctly: corporate bitcoin enthusiasm is rotating into AI infrastructure, and it is visible in real time in a related but distinct data point — software stocks (IGV) have broken a multi-year positive correlation with bitcoin, hitting a one-year relative high (ratio 0.0016) as IGV sits just 13% off its all-time high while bitcoin remains ~50% below its own. The 20-day rolling correlation between IGV and BTC turned negative for the first time since May 2024.
What this means for positioning: this is fundamentally an equity story, not a token story — there is no direct BTC trade here. But it matters for the crypto tape in two ways. First, it's a genuine bullish datapoint for BTC's long-term supply picture: miners diverting capex toward AI leases rather than new hashrate growth is marginally scarcity-supportive for block rewards over time. Second, and more important for how you should read today's price action: crypto-adjacent equities are increasingly trading on AI-infrastructure fundamentals rather than spot BTC direction, which means the software/IGV-BTC divergence and moves like Riot's are not signals to fade or chase in BTC itself — they are separate trades. I would not extrapolate Riot's rally into a bitcoin-bullish signal; it's noise for the token, signal for the miner-equity basket (RIOT, and by extension names with similar power-lease optionality).
XRP is the day's clearest technical stress point — down almost 6% on the week, the worst major by some distance, and threatening to break below $1.00 for the first time since 2024. Futures open interest in XRP grew the most of any token today (+14% to 2.72B contracts, highest since October), and the move is confirmed by negative cumulative volume delta (shorts trading aggressively via market orders, not just passive limit sellers). Funding remains only slightly positive, so this isn't yet a crowded short squeeze setup — it's a genuine breakdown in progress.
Everyone's watching the Fed and oil. Almost nobody is pricing in Strategy's forced selling as a standing, mechanical headwind: four consecutive weekly BTC sales, no buying since June, all to fund STRC's dividend. That's not sentiment — it's structural, recurring supply hitting the market every week regardless of the CPI outcome, and it's a big reason $65,000 has failed four times running even while on-chain accumulation data looks constructive underneath it. Watch MSTR's weekly disclosures as closely as you watch the CPI calendar.