The Morning Brief: Markets flat as leverage stays elevated across majors

The crypto market entered a quiet phase on Aug. 25. Per the desk's boards, bitcoin stood at $78,960.84, down 0.02 percent on the day but up 26.79 percent over the month and 25.3 percent over the week. Ethereum traded at $2,469.85, off 0.48 percent on the day but up 39.22 percent over the month and 31.31 percent over the week. Seven-day rallies also lifted Solana 30.42 percent to $98.17, XRP 46.83 percent to $1.47, and Dogecoin 29.03 percent to $0.0897, though most names turned negative on the session.

Technical readings across the major assets show signs of extended moves. Bitcoin's RSI14 stands at 82.1, ethereum's at 78.2, and Solana's at 83.9, all well into overbought territory per the desk's boards. The fear and greed index reads 74, labeling sentiment as Greed, and has ranged from 25 to 74 over the past 30 days. Both bitcoin and ethereum sit above their 200-day simple moving averages, though neither has posted a golden cross. All major assets remain significantly below their 12-month highs: bitcoin is 36.7 percent off its peak of $124,739.81, ethereum 47.5 percent off $4,707.47, and Solana 60.3 percent off $247.60.

Leverage positions remain elevated. On OKX, bitcoin open interest stands at $2.28 billion with a 1.04 long-to-short ratio and funding at 0.01 percent per 8-hour period. Ethereum open interest sits at $1.55 billion with a 1.25 long-to-short ratio. Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin show more extreme positioning: Solana's ratio is 1.56, XRP's 1.71, and Dogecoin's 3.39, per the desk's leverage board. Liquidations over the past 12 to 24 hours logged 1,600 bitcoin longs ($8.17 million) and 1,600 ethereum longs ($9.07 million) wiped out, with smaller altcoin liquidations skewing toward long bias as well.

Spot inflows have remained robust. Bitcoin ETFs logged $337.6 million of inflows on Aug. 24 and $1.96 billion over the last five sessions, maintaining the same direction for six consecutive days, per the desk's ETF flows board. Ethereum ETFs posted $115.6 million inflows on Aug. 24 and $777.3 million over five sessions, also in the same direction for six days. Cumulative bitcoin ETF inflows now stand at $54.11 billion and ethereum at $12.27 billion.

Whale flows turned negative this week. The desk's Whale Watch board shows $56.87 million in bitcoin moved onto Coinbase over the past 24 hours. At the weekly level, the week ending Aug. 25 logged $684 million net moving onto exchanges, following two prior weeks of similar inflow ($489 million in the week ending Aug. 18 and $493 million the week ending Aug. 11). The prior week ending Aug. 4 saw $1.20 billion move off exchanges, marking a reversal in trend.

Total market capitalization stands at $2.67 trillion, down 2.35 percent on the day. Bitcoin dominance sits at 59.1 percent. Stablecoins total $308.73 billion, up 0.11 percent over 30 days. Network difficulty has eased 0.4 percent and will retarget in 1,662 blocks.