Strategy’s $1 Billion Bitcoin Comeback vs. XRP’s ‘Black Friday’ Ceiling: Main Crypto News This Morning

TL;DR:

• Bitcoin surges to $76,945, snapping a year-long downtrend as ETF inflows hit $606.29 million on Thursday, the highest since May.
• Strategy returns to profit as its 840,447 BTC treasury value climbs above $64.6 billion.
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doubles long-term bond buybacks to $4 billion per operation, fueling the crypto rally.
• XRP jumps 18.03% to $1.37 as Korean traders rotate capital from Samsung and SK Hynix into crypto.
• CFTC Chairman Michael Selig warns the agency will regulate crypto independently if the Senate stalls the CLARITY Act.

The crypto market is closing the working week of Aug. 21 with a powerful three-day rally that has finally pulled it out of its prolonged 2026 slumber. Instead of the usual dreary sideways movement, a giant green candle has appeared on Bitcoin’s daily chart — the price on Bitstamp as per TradingView broke through the year-long downtrend and surged to $76,945, peaking at $79,461.

The main fuel came from large investors. Thursday’s trading session ended with records for U.S. funds as per SoSoValue: net inflows into Bitcoin ETFs jumped to $606.29 million, the highest since May, while Ethereum ETFs attracted $220.77 million — their best result since last October.

This vertical rise over the past 24 hours created a real storm on derivatives exchanges, generating $1.51 billion in liquidations. First, the market completely wiped out the bears, forcibly closing $1.21 billion in short positions. However, as soon as the price found its peak, retail fear of missing out kicked in.

Late traders began jumping into highly leveraged long positions, and a brief morning pullback immediately liquidated $37.43 million in speculative positions within just one hour. 

While Bitcoin is storming new heights and bringing Strategy back into the game, a separate drama is unfolding among altcoins: Korean retail traders are trying to break through a historic “ceiling” that stopped the market a year ago.

Bitcoin news: Billion-dollar comeback — how Saylor outplayed the downturn

The main macroeconomic catalyst behind this three-day rally was an unexpected intervention by the U.S. Treasury.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the department was prepared to more than double the volume of long-term Treasury bond buybacks, raising the limit to at least $4 billion per operation. The Treasury took this step to inject liquidity into the turbulent debt market and push down long-term government bond yields.

For risk assets and the crypto market, this worked like a direct injection of rocket fuel  — falling U.S. Treasury yields immediately weakened the dollar and forced large investors to urgently redirect liquidity into Bitcoin and the technology sector.

This liquidity tsunami completely revived Strategy’s balance sheet. After a prolonged decline, during which Michael Saylor’s company had to periodically lock in losses and sell coins at around $62,000–$64,000, its corporate portfolio finally returned to profit.

This comeback brought the company more than $1 billion in unrealized profit relative to the recent bottom. According to BitcoinTreasuries.net, the company’s balance sheet now shows the following metrics:

• Reserve holdings: The company controls 840,447 BTC worth a total of $64.6 billion. Since the beginning of 2026, Strategy has acted extremely aggressively, increasing its reserves by 25% and purchasing another 167,950 BTC.
• Break-even point: Total investments reached $63.36 billion, bringing the average purchase price to $75,388.45. The spot price’s move above this level has completely erased the previous panic-driven losses.

Saylor’s business may now be more resilient than ever. Its enterprise value has reached $64.9 billion, effectively backing every cent of MSTR’s market capitalization with actual Bitcoin. At the same time, the company relies on a diversified Digital Credit debt stack totaling $13.27 billion, with its corporate bond issues trading at yields ranging from 10.28% to 14.01%.

The company’s key debt instrument, STRC, is currently trading at $95.656. If the price returns to its $100 par value and the current discount of 4.344% closes, Strategy will be able to restart its borrowing program at full capacity and resume aggressive Bitcoin purchases on the open market.

Saylor also has around $4.80 billion in cash remaining. The main question for the weekend is whether he will put this cash to work immediately to push Bitcoin even higher.

On-chain data also indicates that the trend has changed decisively. CryptoQuant’s Bitcoin Bull Score Index has returned to the green bullish zone for the first time since October 2025. The platform’s CEO, Ki Young Ju, says the bearish phase is over and the global bottom has been passed.

This is also confirmed technically on the BTC chart: the price has left the 200-day moving average at $68,970 far behind, and this level now serves as the bulls’ main stronghold.

Crypto market news: Korea’s XRP surge, CFTC ultimatum and the great rotation

Among altcoins, XRP became the main newsmaker after gaining 18.03% in 24 hours to reach $1.37, extending its weekly rally to 38%. The price has moved directly against the purple line at $1.3702 — the peak recorded on Oct. 10, 2025.

That day is known as “Black Friday” because it was indeed a Friday and marked the starting point of the prolonged 2026 decline. XRP is now trying to break this curse by storming the 23-period SMA resistance at $1.4242, supported by the 200-period SMA “floor” at $1.2286.

The fact that South Korea is behind this surge is suggested by trading volumes on Upbit, which jumped 250% to $1.8 billion. XRP became the exchange’s most-traded asset with $546.56 million in volume, overtaking Bitcoin. 

Local retail investors orchestrated a massive capital rotation — they sold shares of technology giants Samsung and SK Hynix on the KOSPI, where they had remained throughout the crypto market’s dormant period, and redirected the cash into crypto.

Interest was additionally fueled by Ripple and Clearpool’s announcement of private lending on the XRP Ledger.

Washington also turned up the heat. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig issued a firm ultimatum: if the Senate continues delaying passage of the CLARITY Act, the agency will begin regulating crypto on its own.

The CFTC is already preparing margin trading rules for U.S. exchanges and legal protections for DeFi. In what became the biggest surprise, the agency is also working with the Department of Commerce to tokenize GPU computing power and turn it into a digital commodity. Against this backdrop, the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance token FET immediately jumped 19.55%, while Ethena’s ENA soared 39.47% due to rising futures funding rates.

However, there is a hidden land mine beneath this celebration. CoinGlass data shows that the three-day pump has completely liquidated short sellers, destroying $4.36 billion in positions over 72 hours. Almost no bears remain in the market, leaving the futures market critically one-sided. Bitcoin’s daily RSI has entered an extremely overheated zone at 84.80.

Any major profit-taking by large investors could now trigger an avalanche of forced position closures:

• Threat to BTC: A technical price pullback toward $65,900 would automatically wipe out $5.71 billion in overleveraged long positions.
• Threat to ETH: A local Ethereum correction toward $2,090 would immediately destroy another $2.15 billion in buyer positions.

The main marker for the long-term trend will be the Senate’s procedural vote on the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15. Until then, the market faces three weeks of intense fighting across overheated futures markets.