ETH led weekend gains among top-10 assets, while altcoins rallied double digitals.
Crypto markets experienced an uptick over the weekend that continued into Monday, Aug. 11, following President Donald Trump signing an executive order allowing cryptocurrencies in 401(k) retirement plans late last week.
The standout earner among large-cap cryptocurrencies was Ethereum (ETH), which broke past $4,200 for the first time since December 2021 over the weekend, following the public ETH treasury firm Fundamental Global filing a $5 billion shelf registration with the SEC. Since then, it has risen to almost $4,350, up nearly 3% on the day, and about 20% over the past week.
Bitcoin (BTC) climbed as high as $122,227 today before retracing slightly to trade near $120,500 – which is still up 1.5% on the day and 5% over the past week.
Meanwhile, XRP is trading flat over the past 24 hours at $3.21, following news last week that the SEC and Ripple had jointly dropped their appeals after a five-year legal battle.
Solana (SOL) is also nearly flat on the day at $180, but has grown almost 9% over the past week.
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization rose 1.2% over the past 24 hours to reach back over $4 trillion, hitting a new all-time high of $4.144 earlier today, according to CoinGecko. Bitcoin dominance has slipped below 60%, currently around 58.6%.
In the past 24 hours, around $419 million in crypto positions were liquidated, including $211 million in shorts and $208 million in longs, according to CoinGlass. ETH led with $131.5 million liquidated, followed by BTC at $125 million.
Calls for Alt Season
“This year’s alt season has mirrored the changing seasons in nature – a long April thaw, a chilly June, and only by late July-early August did summer truly arrive for altcoins. Autumn will come quickly, and prices will fall like leaves in October,” Ray Yossef, CEO of the crypto platform NoOnes, said in comments shared with The Defiant.
Yossef explained that from late June to early July, the market was full of bargains that lead to the rise of larger-cap altcoins, marking the start of altcoin season. “Alt season is at its peak, signaled clearly by Bitcoin’s dominance slipping to 60%, with a 4% drop in just the past week. More than 30 altcoins have outpaced Bitcoin’s growth over the last 90 days,” he added.
Among notable altcoin movers is Zora (ZORA), the token issued by the creator-focused Zora protocol on Coinbase’s Base network. ZORA saw a sharp rally on Sunday, and is currently up 45% in the past 24 hours, extending last week’s rally to 133% gains over the past seven days.
The surge comes after Coinbase announced on Friday that it had begun rolling out DEX trading in its main app, giving U.S. users (excluding New York) access to millions of on-chain assets, including those on Base.
Lido DAO (LDO) and memecoin launchpad pumpfun’s native token PUMP are also seeing double-digit gains, up 12.5% and 20% on the day, respectively. Meanwhile, LayerZero’s ZRO also surged 20% in the past 24 hours following news that the LayerZero Foundation proposed a $110 million deal to acquire the cross-chain bridge Stargate and all outstanding STG tokens.
“The positive momentum around Base and Creator Coins on platforms like Zora is taking over the community, but let us be clear: this is not a short hype cycle,” said Ignacio Palomera, CEO of Bondex, in comments shared with The Defiant. “What we are witnessing is a fundamental, albeit messy, evolution in how creators can truly monetize their content.”
ETH Leads Investment Flows
Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded nearly $404 million in net inflows on last week’s final trading, Aug. 8, marking the third consecutive day of net inflows, and bringing weekly net inflows into BTC ETFs to $246.75 million.
Meanwhile, ETH ETFs pulled in even more than BTC products with $461 million in net inflows on Friday, marking a fourth day of net inflows. This figure also marks the ETFs’ fourth-largest single-day inflows since launching in July 2024, and brings weekly net inflows for last week to $326.83 million.
Crypto investment funds overall experienced a big turnaround last week, CoinShares said in its latest report. After losing $1 billion earlier in the week on weak U.S. jobs data, they pulled in $1.57 billion following the Trump administration’s 401(k) executive order. That left total net inflows for the week at $572 million.
Ethereum products brought in the most money at $268 million, pushing this year’s total to a record $8.2 billion. Bitcoin products followed with $260 million, while SOL, XRP and NEAR saw inflows of $21.8 million, $18.4 million and $10.1 million, respectively, per CoinShares data.