Bitcoin muscled its way back above $63,000 and a pack of altcoins ran even harder over the July 4 holiday weekend, painting the entire weekly crypto board green even as US stock and bond markets stayed shut. The rebound landed right after one of Bitcoin's roughest stretches in years, and it carried the exact signal that bulls had been waiting on all month long.
Bitcoin finished the week up 5%, but the real muscle came from the alts. Following its Robinhood integration, LIT led most of the pack, jumping 44% to $2.50 and setting a fresh local high. More broadly, the CMC20 index that tracks the top 20 assets rose about 9% on the week.
Two reasons behind the turn
Two factors drove the reversal. The first was Thursday's soft June jobs report, which showed just 57,000 payrolls against roughly 113,000 expected. The weak print eased fears of rate hikes and gave risk assets room to run. The second and more important factor was that ETF flows flipped. After bleeding a record $4 billion or more in June, spot Bitcoin ETFs swung to $223.5 million in net inflows on July 2. Ethereum ETFs stayed green two days running, adding about $15 million on July 1 and $29 million on July 2. The institutional selling that defined June's collapse finally showed its first real sign of reversing.
Whales buying near the bottom
This bounce comes off a 21-month low of $57,950 to open July, arriving after Bitcoin's worst first half since 2018 and 2022. All month, whales quietly absorbed the ETF selling, buying roughly $16.7 billion of Bitcoin over two weeks. That kind of divergence has shown up near past market bottoms before. The ETFs flipping green was the final piece bulls had been waiting for.
Relief for Saylor's ecosystem
Michael Saylor's ecosystem caught some welcome relief in the rally too. STRC jumped 21% to $87.87 to close the week after touching lows near $70. MSTR stock also rebounded 21% and reclaimed the $100 mark.
Of course, one or two green days do not undo a record-outflow month. But alts outrunning Bitcoin is a classic risk-on tell, and for the first time in weeks the flow picture is pointing up. Now the question is whether it holds once full liquidity returns.
The latest market snapshot
In the latest trading, the crypto majors sat flat with HYPE leading the way. BTC held even at $62k, ETH at $1,747, SOL at $80, and HYPE was up 2% at $70. Among the top movers, DEXE (+15%), LAB (+9%) and LIT (+8%) led. In commodities, oil was even at $68 while gold rose 1% to $4,170. Stock futures were green as chip stocks rebounded, with the DOW flat and the Nasdaq up 1%.
Trump, policy and the CLARITY Act
President Trump defended his crypto ventures after his disclosure showed more than $1 billion in 2025 earnings, pushing back on conflict-of-interest criticism. At the same time, Democrats renewed their calls to bar politicians and their families from the industry.
Odds of the CLARITY Act passing briefly surged to 55% after two major law enforcement groups shifted their stance, but they have since retraced to 44%. Only one month now remains until the key August 7 deadline that marks the start of the Senate's summer break.
Vitalik's Lean Ethereum roadmap
Vitalik Buterin laid out Ethereum's Lean Ethereum roadmap, a three to four year plan. It aims to make recursive STARKs a native verification layer, swap the remaining quantum-vulnerable cryptography for post-quantum alternatives, introduce a scalable state type reaching 100 TB by 2030 to cut some transaction costs by more than 10 times, and explore RISC-V or leanISA virtual machines for programmable privacy.
Miner stress and treasuries
Bitcoin miner stress hit a historically rare level. The Miner Cycle Stress Composite fell to a new 2026 low and entered its undervalued range, a level that previously appeared near major bottoms in 2015, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024.
On corporate treasuries and ETFs, the Bitcoin ETFs saw $223 million in net inflows on Thursday, though they still logged $527 million in net outflows across the week. The Ethereum ETFs took in $29 million on Thursday but saw $13 million in outflows for the week. STRC rebounded to $89.17 on Thursday, up 21% on the week.
Meme leaders and Solana movers
Meme leaders were very green on the week; DOGE rose 6%, SHIB 4%, PEPE 15%, PENGU 8% and BONK 11%, while TRUMP was even. ANSEM soared 300% on the week to a $350 million FDV, making it a top 100 token by FDV. On Solana, LEVI (+180x), ZERO (+48%) and JOBY (+430%) led the movers. On Base, SYND (+30%) and LFI (+30%) stood out.
Tokens, airdrops and NFTs
Summer Finance was exploited over the weekend, with $6 million drained so far. VVV has fallen 20% since its equity announcement last week and is now trading at $11.56. Across NFTs, most leaders were green over the weekend; Punks were up 4% at 32.4 ETH, BAYC up 5% at 9.2 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.5 ETH, and Hypurr up 2% at 220 HYPE. Murakami Flowers (+29%) and Masks of Luci (+17%) led the top movers. Daniel Sundheim spent $2.2 million acquiring 22 Punks over the past week, building one of the best collections in existence.
