Bitcoin held below $60,000 as a 40-year low in the Japanese yen lifted the dollar and pressured crypto. Ether, XRP and dogecoin posted steep weekly losses, while Strategy's plan to possibly sell more than $1 billion of bitcoin added to the caution.
A surging U.S. dollar kept bitcoin pinned below $60,000 on Tuesday, and the prospect of more than $1 billion in potential sales by Strategy gave traders one more reason to stay cautious. Bitcoin traded around $59,514, down 0.3% over 24 hours and 7% on the week, holding below its 200-week moving average — a long-term line it has sat on all month.
Altcoins lead the slide
The week's losses ran deep across the altcoins. Ether fell 8.2% over seven days to about $1,587, XRP dropped 7.1% to $1.04 and dogecoin slid 11.9% to $0.072, the worst of the majors. BNB lost 6.5%.
Solana bucked the trend, rising 3% on the day and 2.9% on the week to $74. Hyperliquid's HYPE bounced 7% on the day to leave it roughly flat for the week.
A stronger dollar does the damage
The immediate driver was currencies. The Japanese yen slipped to a four-decade low of 162.40 per dollar, its weakest since October 1986. That climb pushed the Dollar Index up to 101.32 from nearly 101 a day earlier.
A stronger dollar makes dollar-priced assets like bitcoin costlier for foreign buyers and tends to draw money out of risk trades. Onchain demand stayed soft through the slide, with active addresses sitting around 618,000 — the middle of their recent range rather than breaking higher.
Strategy reverses course on selling
Adding to the caution, Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, said Monday it may sell more than a billion dollars of the token under a new program to shore up its finances. The move reverses founder Michael Saylor's long-standing refusal to sell.
The prospect of those sales now hangs over an already thin market, with the largest corporate holder turning from buyer to potential seller for the first time.
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