The weekend flush came, and then it got bought. Bitcoin printed $75,550.89 early Sunday on Crypto.com Exchange — the low of a session whose forced selling was longs, not shorts — and by about 22:13 UTC on August 23 it was back near $77,697, roughly $2,146 off that low and about $623 above Saturday’s $77,074.12 settle. The 1D candle is still open.
Friday locked $78K, Sunday sold it, Sunday took it back
Walk the settled candles on Crypto.com’s BTC/USDT pair. Thursday settled $73,026.02 after tagging $73,410.93. Friday opened on that print, ran $73,014.49–$79,525.99, and settled $78,344.39. Saturday opened on Friday’s close, tagged $78,832.47, printed a $76,489.55 low, and settled $77,074.12.
Sunday’s still-forming candle opened at Saturday’s settle, sank to $75,550.89 — undercutting Saturday’s low by about $939 — and then recovered the whole move, tagging $78,059.40 before easing to the current mark. That high is still about $285 short of Friday’s settle, so the week’s best print has not been retaken. But the day is now green against Saturday, which is the opposite of where it sat twelve hours ago.
Ethereum traced the same round trip. Friday settled $2,516.47 after tagging $2,547.84. Saturday settled $2,422.37. Sunday sank to $2,355.30, then recovered to about $2,462 at the same snapshot — roughly $40 above Saturday’s close, with a session high of $2,485.19.
The mix flipped, then the bid turned up
The week’s first impulse was mechanical. CoinDesk put Wednesday’s short liquidations at about $3 billion over 24 hours against $263.5 million on the long side, with Bitcoin about $1.67 billion of that total and Ether $1.14 billion, more than $1 billion clearing in a single hour. Bloomberg called it the biggest wave of short liquidations in records going back to 2021: more than $1 billion of Bitcoin shorts in about an hour, and $2.7 billion of bearish bets across crypto tokens.
That flush sat on a policy spark. The U.S. Treasury said on August 19 it would at least double liquidity-support buybacks of longer-dated nominal coupons, from a $2 billion maximum to at least $4 billion per operation starting September 9. Reuters noted the 30-year yield had just printed its highest since 2007. Once the six-week range high near $67,000 gave way, shorts that had faded every approach were force-bought into thin supply.
The weekend ran that engine in reverse, and then stalled it. Chaincatcher, citing CoinGlass, put the rolling 24-hour liquidation total near $995 million as of about 00:56 UTC on August 23, with $721 million of it longs and $274 million shorts, across about 214,000 accounts. TechFlow’s later CoinGlass snapshot at 05:25 UTC had the same rolling window down to $365 million as Saturday’s larger flush aged off, and a four-hour burst of $115 million that was more than 90 percent longs.
Those readings both land before Sunday’s low. The leverage that was going to be closed was largely closed by mid-morning UTC, and what followed — a $2,100-odd recovery on a weekend tape — is what a market does when the forced sellers have finished and the remaining flow is voluntary. Rolling windows move, and a thin book cuts both ways.
The climb, the flush, and the round trip
The series pairs settled daily closes (and Sunday’s still-forming candle) with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Price left the $64,000s on Wednesday, locked the $78,000s on Friday, gave a slice back through Saturday, and has spent Sunday reclaiming most of it.
BTC price vs the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, August 16–23. Friday settled $78,344 after tagging $79,526. Saturday settled $77,074. Sunday’s still-open candle is an intraday read as of ~22:13 UTC, not a settled close. Sources: Crypto.com Exchange 1D candles and alternative.me.
The composite read 72 (Greed) on Friday, 71 on Saturday, and 66 on Sunday. Last Monday it was still 31 (Fear). Note the gauge cooled six points from the week’s peak on a day price finished higher than it started — sentiment surveys lag a tape that moved twice in one session.
Cash desks stay dark until Monday
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs do not create or redeem shares on Saturday or Sunday. Farside Investors already printed Friday: +$307.5 million, IBIT +$239.3 million, taking the five cash days from August 17 through 21 to $1,917.8 million. Ether products added +$184.0 million on Friday and $692.6 million for the same week. Those rows are settled. They do not update again until the August 24 cash session.
The weekend tape leaves that sheet untouched, which is what makes it worth watching. With authorized participants offline, nothing structural was buying the low — no creation basket, no rebalancing flow. Sunday’s $75,550.89 print sits about $2,793 under Friday’s settle and still $12,650 above last Sunday’s $62,900.42 close, and it got bought back inside a single session by whatever is left trading on a weekend.
Friday’s cash row and Friday’s settle are already in the book. What Sunday adds is a test the ETF sheet cannot record: the first real drawdown since the breakout was absorbed without institutional plumbing open. An intraday mark near $77,697 can still finish the day above or below where it sits now, and Monday’s cash session is where the wrappers get their say. Description only, not a recommendation to buy or sell the coin or the wrappers.
