Asia Morning Briefing: BTC Fragility and ETH Rotation Signal Market Bracing for Consolidation Without New Liquidity

Good Morning, Asia. Here's what's making news in the markets: Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during ￰0￱ and an overview of market moves and ￰1￱ a detailed overview of U. S. markets, see CoinDesk's Crypto Daybook ￰2￱ is trading just below $110,000 after another failed bounce, down roughly 7% since peaking over $117,000 in the wake of Powell’s dovish Jackson Hole speech, according to CoinDesk market data .

Ethereum, which briefly touched $4,900 before a sharp reversal, is holding above $4,300 but showing signs of exhaustion after weeks of ￰3￱ bull run is fraying, market observers say, as thinning liquidity, ETF outflows, and fragile onchain activity collide with whales rotating into ETH and retail longs getting ￰4￱ beneath the surface, billion-dollar sovereign and institutional allocations are quietly scaling into volatility, creating a sharp divergence between weak short-term conviction and programmatic long-horizon buying. Glassnode’s latest Market Pulse shows the cycle slipping from euphoria into fragility: spot momentum fading toward oversold territory, ETF flows swinging to a $1 billion outflow, and realized profits collapsing back to ￰5￱ fragility was underscored by QCP Capital , which traced this weekend’s crash to an early holder unloading 24,000 BTC into thin liquidity, a move that cascaded into $500 million in ￰6￱ said the sale exposed just how brittle the market has become with ETFs bleeding $1.2 billion in outflows even as whales rotate into ETH, pushing the ETH/BTC cross through 0.04.

Singapore-based market maker Enflux picks up that thread, arguing that not all flows are created ￰7￱ retail longs were blown out, a $2.55 billion ETH stake routed through a single contract and the UAE royal family’s $700 million BTC exposure via Citadel Mining looks less like speculative punts and more like sovereign and institutional ￰8￱ other words, even as Glassnode’s onchain data shows weakening address activity and fee volumes, there are counterparties deliberately using volatility to scale into ￰9￱ result is a divergence: retail leverage continues to get flushed, while long-horizon allocators quietly ￰10￱ with transaction fees collapsing back toward decade lows and blocks clearing with little congestion, liquidity on the Bitcoin blockchain itself looks thin.

That’s a problem for miners already squeezed by halved rewards, and it leaves the broader market bracing for consolidation, or deeper drawdowns into September, historically Bitcoin’s weakest ￰11￱ Movement BTC : Bitcoin’s brief rebound from its weekend plunge failed Monday, with prices rejected at $113,000 before sliding to a seven-week low near $109,700, down 2.7% on the day and 7% from Friday’s post-Powell peak above $117,000. ETH : Altcoins buckled Monday with ETH dropping nearly 8% below $4,400 and SOL, DOGE, ADA, and LINK sliding 6–8%, triggering $700 million in liquidations, mostly from over $627 million in long bets. Gold: Gold is holding above $3,350 as Powell’s dovish Jackson Hole remarks boost rate-cut bets and geopolitical tensions sustain safe-haven demand, even as dollar strength and upcoming ￰12￱ data loom as ￰13￱ 225: Asia-Pacific stocks fell Tuesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix down 0.54%, as investors weighed Trump’s China comments and U.

S.–South Korea trade talks on planned 15% tariffs. S&P 500: ￰14￱ pulled back Monday from a rate-cut-fueled rally, with the S&P 500 down 0.4% as focus turned to Nvidia’s upcoming ￰15￱ in Crypto: Grayscale Files to Convert Avalanche Trust to ETF ( Decrypt ) Japan's Finance Minister Says Crypto Assets Can be Part of Diversified Portfolio ( CoinDesk ) Venture trends, regulatory wins, and consumer innovation: Tom Schmidt and Alok Vasudev on crypto’s new era ( The Block )