The crypto rally took a pit stop on Thursday as stocks continued to zoom higher.
Bitcoin traded at $80,945 in Asian hours, down 0.7% over 24 hours but still up 6.9% on the week. Ether (ETH) fell 2% to $2,326, and was the biggest laggard, falling 4.4% to $0.1106 after last week’s run took its 30-day return into double digits.
XRP and BNB remained more stable, with XRP at $1.41 and BNB up 1.3% at $643. Solana zoomed 6.1% on the week to $88.06.
The withdrawal came as global stock markets rose to new highs on US-Iran ceasefire hopes, with reports indicating the two countries are working on a proposal to end the nearly 10-week conflict.
The MSCI All Country World Index rose 0.3% and MSCI’s Asia gauge jumped 1.9% to a record, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 hitting an intraday high. South Korea passed Canada as the world’s seventh-largest stock market by value, with Softbank rising 18% and TSMC adding 3.3%. Wall Street gauges closed at all-time highs on Wednesday, with about 80% of S&P 500 companies beating earnings estimates, Bloomberg reported.
Brent crude remained below USD 102 per barrel on speculation that a US-Iran deal would help resume oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, while gold rose to $4,700 a barrel for a third day in a row.
FxPro chief market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich said in a note that bitcoin’s next test lies at the 200-day moving average around $83,300. A moving average smooths out short-term volatility by averaging an asset’s price over a period of time, and the 200-day version is among the most widely viewed long-term trend gauges among traders.
“A solid consolidation above this level would be a further sign of bullish dominance,” he wrote, adding that the first such sign came a month ago when bitcoin held above the 50-day moving average. He flagged that a short-term profit-taking phase is likely as bitcoin nears $83,000, “allowing some of the gains to be taken.”
The structural background continues to support the move. Tether’s market cap has grown by $5.9 billion over the past 60 days, as of analyst Darkfost, reversing a $2 billion monthly outflow trend that ran through early 2026. Such issuances are considered to be a source of new capital entering the crypto market.
In other developments, Morgan Stanley signaled this week that US banks may eventually be able to keep bitcoin on their balance sheets despite current regulatory barriers, with the bank already running a bitcoin-based ETP and planning to launch spot crypto trading on its wealth platform later this year.
Western Union launched its own stablecoin, USDPT, on Solana to bypass traditional interbank settlement delays.
Elsewhere, BitMine added more than 100,000 ETH for the third week in a row, bringing its ether reserves to 5.18 million ETH, worth about $13 billion, or 4.29% of the total supply.
