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