coindesk.com
Crypto markets barely registered one of the sharpest equity rallies of the year on Friday, with bitcoin holding near $64,300 while South Korean stocks staged a record rebound from the selloff that dominated the past two weeks.
The majors were close to unchanged. Ether traded at $1,907, $XRP at $1.08, solana at $74 and dogecoin at $0.07, with roughly $27 billion changing hands in bitcoin and $7 billion in ether. BNB was the exception, up 3% on the day to $590 and the only major holding a meaningful weekly gain. Bitcoin spiked to $65,300 in early Asian hours before giving it back within an hour.
The weekly picture stays soft. Hyperliquid's HYPE is down 5% over seven sessions, solana and $XRP are each off 3%, and bitcoin has lost 2%. Ether and dogecoin are up 1%.
Equities went the other way, hard. The Kospi surged as much as 17%, rebounding from a three-day rout that had taken the index more than 40% below its June peak. Samsung and SK Hynix both jumped more than 23%, and Taiwan Semiconductor rose 10%, making chipmakers the biggest contributors to a broad Asian advance.
The move followed the largest rally in U.S. chip stocks in more than a year, with the Nasdaq 100 snapping a six-day losing streak. Amazon rose nearly 10% after hours on strong cloud earnings, while Apple fell 6% as supply shortages hit its sales forecast.
Bitcoin tracked semiconductors closely through July, rising and falling with the chip trade. It held through last Thursday's $797 billion drop in U.S. megacap technology, held through Korea's record two-day crash midweek, and has now sat out the rebound as well.
A major security breach having a widespread impact on some bitcoin wallets made no impression on the tape either. About 594 bitcoin, worth roughly $38 million, was swept from around 500 wallets on Thursday through a flaw in Coldcard hardware wallet key generation, without registering on the price.
In currencies, the yen weakened, giving back part of Thursday's gain, its largest against the dollar in more than two years, which followed another round of intervention by Japanese authorities.
The currency extended losses after the Bank of Japan left rates unchanged, as economists had expected. Treasuries rose alongside the dollar, and oil extended its decline.