“Once liquidations begin to influence prices, the market may move faster than actual demand would warrant,” said Shawn Young, chief analyst at MEXC Research, who is monitoring how bitcoin trades in the $60,000 to $63,000 range now that the first rally is underway.
MSCI’s Asia-Pacific stock gauge climbed 1.4% as investors turned their attention back to semiconductor stocks on renewed optimism about AI demand, trimming the week’s loss to less than 1%.
South Korean company Kospi, a benchmark for AI investment, jumped 4%. SK Hynix was among the gainers after valuing $26.5 billion worth of American depositary shares, one of the largest stock sales of the year.
Gains widened further as the yen appreciated 0.6% and yields on long-term Japanese government bonds fell after Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said the government wanted pension funds to increase their holdings of domestic assets. Bloomberg’s dollar indicator fell and is heading for a second consecutive weekly decline.
Nothing crypto-native moved Bitcoin this week. There have been no ETF flows of any size, no protocol events, and no trade failures. Bitcoin absorbed an oil shock, a global bond sell-off, a hawkish reassessment of Fed expectations and two rounds of U.S. strikes against Iran, and finished up 4.2% because Korean memory chips are in demand and the dollar is losing ground.
