Saylor sat out Bitcoin’s 20% rally while Tom Lee bought Ethereum after a 30% surge

Bitcoin and Ethereum surged last week as falling Treasury yields, renewed US crypto optimism, and a wave of short liquidations sent digital assets sharply higher.

Bitcoin climbed more than 20% and approached $80,000, while Ethereum gained about 30% in its strongest weekly advance since May 2025.

The rally drew fresh $2.6 billion in ETF inflows, forced billions of dollars in bearish positions out of the market, and pushed both assets to multi-month highs.

Interestingly, the breakout produced a sharp split between the companies behind crypto’s two largest corporate treasuries.

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, used the strength to raise capital without adding to its BTC holdings, while BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest ETH holding company, continued buying the digital asset into the rally.

Strategy uses the rally to build a $6.7 billion cash buffer

Strategy's decision to sit out Bitcoin's breakout coincided with one of its largest capital raises, leaving the company with more cash to deploy than at any point in its Bitcoin-buying campaign.

Between Aug. 17 and Aug. 23, Strategy said that it sold 18.26 million MSTR shares for about $2.01 billion in net proceeds.

Rather than recycle that money into Bitcoin, it directed $300 million into its existing USD Reserve, used $136.4 million to repurchase STRC preferred shares, and placed most of the remainder into a newly created USD Cash account.