On Friday, cryptocurrency markets largely missed out on one of the year's sharpest stock market rallies: bitcoin held near the $64,300 level, while South Korean stocks staged a record bounce from the sell-off that dominated the last two weeks.
Major cryptocurrencies showed little price movement. Ethereum traded at $1907, $XRP at $1.08, Solana at $74, and Dogecoin at $0.07, with trading volume around $27 billion for bitcoin and $7 billion for Ethereum. An exception was BNB, which rose 3% on the day to $590, making it the only major cryptocurrency to show a significant weekly gain. Bitcoin briefly jumped to $65,300 at the start of the Asian trading session before paring gains within an hour.
The weekly picture remains weak. The Hyperliquid Index (HYPE) fell 5% over 7 sessions, Solana and $XRP fell 3%, and bitcoin lost 2%. Ethereum and Dogecoin gained 1%.
Stocks, in contrast, sharply reversed course. The Kospi index surged 17%, recovering from a three-day rout that left the index more than 40% below its June peak. Shares of Samsung and SK Hynix surged more than 23%, and Taiwan Semiconductor rose 10%, making chipmakers the biggest contributors to the overall Asian market gain.
This move followed the biggest rally in over a year for U.S. chipmaker stocks, with the Nasdaq 100 breaking a 6-day losing streak. Amazon shares jumped nearly 10% in after-hours trading on strong cloud computing results, while Apple shares fell 6% due to supply shortages impacting its sales forecast.
Throughout July, bitcoin closely tracked semiconductor companies, rising and falling alongside the chip market. It weathered a $797 billion drop in U.S. tech stocks last Thursday, survived a record two-day crash in Korea mid-week, and has now also remained sidelined from the recovery.
A major security breach with widespread impact on some bitcoin wallets also left no mark. On Thursday, about 594 bitcoins, worth roughly $38 million, were drained from approximately 500 wallets due to a flaw in key generation for the Coldcard hardware wallet, with no impact on price.
In currency markets, the yen weakened, partly reversing gains made on Thursday - its biggest against the dollar in over two years - which followed another round of Japanese authorities' intervention.
The currency continued to fall after the Bank of Japan left interest rates unchanged, as economists expected. Treasury bonds rose along with the dollar, and oil extended its decline.
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