The crypto market is starting the new week the same way it finished the last one: in the green. After its strongest week of 2026, Bitcoin is up around 1.7% today and has moved back above $77,
The crypto market is starting the new week the same way it finished the last one: in the green.
After its strongest week of 2026, Bitcoin is up around 1.7% today and has moved back above $77,000. Ethereum is doing even better, gaining roughly 3.5% and approaching $2,500. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has climbed above $2.6 trillion.
This looks, at least for now, like a continuation of the powerful recovery that began last week rather than a completely new move.
Ethereum has gained roughly 30% over the past seven days. XRP has been one of the biggest winners, jumping around 50% from its recent lows, and HYPE has rallied roughly 36%. Bitcoin itself recently climbed more than 20% from around $63,000.
After months of frustrating price action, crypto holders have finally had something to celebrate. More importantly, the recovery is no longer limited to Bitcoin. Capital has spread into Ethereum and higher-beta altcoins, which explains why the broader market capitalization has recovered so quickly.
Institutional flows provide another important piece of the story.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded approximately $1.918 billion in net inflows between Aug. 17 and Aug. 21, according to SoSoValue data reported by crypto media. Ethereum ETFs attracted another $697 million. XRP ETFs recorded $39.78 million, Solana ETFs $28.34 million and HYPE products $3.89 million.
Those figures matter because last week’s rally wasn’t taking place against a backdrop of institutional withdrawals. Money was moving back into crypto investment products at the same time prices were breaking higher.
Bitcoin naturally received the largest amount in dollar terms, but Ethereum’s $697 million is notable given ETH’s much smaller market capitalization. That lines up with what has happened in the spot market, where Ethereum has significantly outperformed Bitcoin during the recovery.
There is also a psychological component.
Source: SoSoValueOnce Bitcoin broke through several resistance levels and shorts began getting squeezed, traders who had spent months sitting on the sidelines suddenly had to reconsider their positioning. Rising prices attract attention, and attention can quickly turn into fresh capital in crypto.
The ETF numbers show that at least part of that renewed demand is coming through regulated investment vehicles rather than purely speculative offshore leverage.
There is another development happening beneath the price rally that shouldn’t be ignored: stablecoin adoption continues to expand outside traditional crypto trading.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said on Aug. 23 that USDT usage is growing across developing economies including Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and Turkey. According to CriptoNoticias, Ardoino described USDT as increasingly being used for domestic commerce, cross-border transactions and as a digital substitute for dollars in countries dealing with currency depreciation, limited dollar availability or financial restrictions.
Tether CEO Says USDT Use Is Rising Across Several Developing CountriesTether CEO Paolo Ardoino said on Aug. 23 that USDT adoption is increasing in developing countries including Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and Turkey, according to CriptoNoticias.He said the stablecoin is… pic.twitter.com/yZYL2LveM4
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 24, 2026
The use cases differ from country to country. In Venezuela, USDT has reportedly become relevant for import and export settlements. Bolivia has seen increased use in commercial transactions, Argentina has an established peer-to-peer stablecoin market, and Turkish users have turned to dollar-linked digital assets as protection against persistent inflation.
This matters for the broader crypto market because stablecoins are increasingly becoming infrastructure rather than simply something traders use to park money between trades.
The investment narrative around crypto has also expanded considerably. Bitcoin remains the largest asset, but stablecoins, tokenization, payments and on-chain financial settlement are becoming major parts of the institutional crypto thesis.
Popular crypto analyst Doctor Profit has taken an especially bullish view following Bitcoin’s latest breakout.
In his newest weekly Bitcoin outlook, the analyst said the move above several major resistance levels confirmed his previous call that the bear market has ended. He describes the current phase as a “Soft Bull Market.”
Rather than focusing on every small Bitcoin move, Doctor Profit says there are now only two levels that matter to him: $71,000 and $78,500.
The first is his major support.
Bitcoin has already moved substantially above $71,000, and Doctor Profit believes a return toward that region would still fit within the bullish structure. He isn’t necessarily expecting such a retest, however, and argues that the market may not give investors waiting for substantially lower prices another easy entry.
The second level is $78,500, which sits only around 2% above Bitcoin’s current price.
Source: X/@DrProfitCryptoThat makes the coming battle particularly interesting.
Bitcoin has already returned above $77,000. If buyers maintain momentum, the market could soon test the analyst’s next major resistance.
Doctor Profit believes a confirmed move above $78,500 would open the path toward approximately $82,000.
That would put Bitcoin only around 6%-7% above its current level.
His interpretation becomes even more bullish above $82,000. According to the analyst, breaking that level with strength would mark the transition from what he calls a Soft Bull Market into a more aggressive bull-market expansion.
His roadmap can therefore be simplified considerably:
$71,000 support → $78,500 resistance → $82,000 potential breakout target.
The zone Bitcoin is currently trading inside is less important to him. He views fluctuations between $71,000 and $78,500 largely as noise unless either boundary is decisively broken.
The chart also fits with what happened during last week’s rally. Bitcoin found aggressive buying interest after falling toward the low-$60,000 region and then recovered at unusual speed.
Doctor Profit sees that response as evidence that substantial capital was waiting for lower prices.
That doesn’t mean Bitcoin cannot correct. After gaining more than 20% in a matter of days, even a healthy bullish market can have big pullbacks.
The bigger question is whether those declines continue producing higher lows and attracting buyers.
One of the main bearish arguments following the rally is that Bitcoin’s short-term momentum indicators have become stretched.
Doctor Profit doesn’t consider this a major threat to his macro thesis.
He distinguishes between the daily RSI and the higher-time-frame indicators. The daily RSI can become overbought after a rapid rally, but the analyst says weekly and monthly RSI readings remain much less extreme.
There is another reason he believes the daily reading needs context: part of Bitcoin’s move came from short liquidations and forced covering.
When traders short an asset, they eventually need to buy it back to close their positions. During a fast breakout, those purchases can accelerate the rally. In other words, some of the buying isn’t necessarily new bullish leverage entering the market; it can be bearish positioning being forced out.
That distinction doesn’t make an overbought RSI irrelevant, but it helps explain why price can move unusually quickly.
Doctor Profit compared the situation with Bitcoin’s recovery in 2023. BTC initially rallied from around $16,000 toward $25,000 before suffering a sizeable correction. That pullback briefly revived bearish sentiment, only for Bitcoin to subsequently resume its advance toward $30,000.
His point isn’t that 2026 must reproduce the same price path. It is that big corrections can occur inside larger recoveries, particularly after traders become convinced that a rally has gone too far.
Read also: Bitcoin Price Warning: This BTC Rally May Not Be What It Seems
Bitcoin is now approaching a point where the next few thousand dollars could tell us much more about the strength of this recovery.
The immediate level from Doctor Profit’s analysis is $78,500. A convincing break above it would leave $82,000 as the next target in his framework. If Bitcoin then establishes itself above $82,000, the argument that the market has moved into a stronger bullish phase would become considerably harder to dismiss.
On the downside, $71,000 is the level to watch. A normal correction toward that area wouldn’t necessarily invalidate the recovery. A sustained break below it would be more problematic and would force traders to reconsider whether last week’s move was a durable trend change or simply an exceptionally powerful relief rally.
Altcoins could remain even more volatile.
Ethereum’s roughly 30% weekly rally and the much larger moves in XRP and HYPE show what happens when risk appetite returns after months of depressed sentiment. They also mean these assets can experience larger corrections if Bitcoin pauses or falls.
For now, though, the market is doing something crypto holders haven’t seen consistently for months: breakouts are holding, dips are attracting buyers, ETF capital is returning and strength is spreading beyond Bitcoin.
Only days ago, social media was filled with claims that crypto was “dead.” Bitcoin is now back above $77,000, Ethereum is approaching $2,500 and the entire market is worth more than $2.6 trillion.
That rapid change in sentiment is one of the defining characteristics of crypto.
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The post Here’s Why the Crypto Market Is Up as Bitcoin and Ethereum Pump appeared first on CaptainAltcoin.
