Scott Bessent Fuels Bitcoin Rally as Spot Bitcoin ETFs See $1.9B Inflows - iShares Bitcoin Trust (NASDAQ

Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) clocked the strongest weekly rally in years, making the cryptocurrency start to look less like a high-beta stock proxy and more like digital gold.

Bitcoin jumped roughly 23% in the week ended Aug 21, while gold gained about 5%, the dollar weakened 0.8% and the S&P 500 fell 1.4%. The unusual combination came as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced plans to double the size of Treasury buybacks for longer-dated bonds, briefly pushing the 30-year yield lower.

The bond market later reversed most of that move. Bitcoin and gold did not. That divergence is particularly notable because historical data show that previous weeks when Bitcoin gained more than 15% while stocks fell, gold rose and the dollar weakened were accompanied by falling 30-year Treasury yields.

This time, the 30-year yield actually rose 1 basis point.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs Validate the Rally

The move is already showing up in the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF market.

The 12 U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a combined $1.92 billion in net inflows last week, according to Farside Investors data.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (NASDAQ:IBIT) accounted for roughly $1.33 billion of those inflows, or nearly 70% of the weekly total. Its strongest day came Aug. 20, when IBIT pulled in $503 million as total spot Bitcoin ETF inflows reached $606.3 million.