The crypto market has posted sharp gains across Bitcoin and several major altcoins, but Cryptex Finance data covering 36 assets and roughly 92% of the digital asset market shows that capital remains heavily concentrated in Bitcoin and Ethereum despite prices rising across the market.
Summary
- Cryptex’s 36-asset index gained just 1.92% over the trailing seven days, even as several major cryptocurrencies posted much larger gains from their recent lows.
- Joe Sticco said low price dispersion suggests cryptocurrencies are moving together rather than investors rotating capital between assets and sectors.
- Sticco said roughly nine out of every ten dollars entering regulated crypto products during one recent session went to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF inflows provide evidence of institutional demand, although Sticco said rising asset values should not be confused with fresh capital entering the funds.
Cryptex Finance co-founder Joe Sticco told crypto.news that participation in the recent rally had spread across the market, but the allocation of capital had not followed at the same pace, leaving cryptocurrencies trading more like a single group than a market in which investors are selecting individual winners.
Cryptex’s market index stood at 1,199.69, almost 20% above the base level of 1,000 set on Feb. 20. The index tracks 36 assets across five sectors using Coinbase pricing, giving Sticco a larger sample than Bitcoin or a handful of major altcoins alone.
Over the trailing seven days, however, the index had risen only 1.92%. Sticco said the figure matters because much of the rally that produced large percentage gains from recent lows took place within roughly 72 hours between Aug. 19 and Aug. 21, followed by several days of relatively flat trading.
“Measure from the low, and you get a rally. Measure the trailing week, which is what most readers think they’re being told, and you get almost nothing,” Sticco said.
Bitcoin’s acceleration during that period followed a major derivatives flush alongside renewed spot demand. Earlier market coverage showed BTC jumping from below $65,000 to around $69,500 on Aug. 19 as more than $1 billion in crypto short positions were liquidated within an hour.
Crypto market gains show little separation between assets
Price dispersion within Cryptex’s index provides another reason Sticco is reluctant to describe the rally as a full capital rotation.
On the day measured by Cryptex, the strongest constituent gained 6.71%, while the weakest declined 1.49%. Despite covering 36 cryptocurrencies from five sectors, the entire range between the best and worst performers amounted to roughly eight percentage points.
“That is not a market sorting winners from losers. That’s a market moving as one block,” Sticco said.
According to Sticco, such low dispersion indicates that a common market factor is lifting cryptocurrencies together instead of investors moving money between assets based on individual fundamentals.
Major tokens nevertheless produced very different headline returns when measured across the rally. Sticco put Bitcoin’s seven-day increase at roughly 14%, XRP’s at 28%, and Solana’s at about 19%.
Capital allocation did not match the apparent spread in price performance. Bitcoin dominance remained around 57% to 60%, depending on the market universe used, while Sticco cited an Altcoin Season Index reading below 40, far under the 75 level generally used by the index to signal an altcoin season.
Solana also remained more than 50% below its October 2025 level despite gaining about 19% during the week, according to Sticco.
“Participation broadened. Allocation didn’t,” he said.
Institutional flows remain concentrated in Bitcoin and Ethereum
Regulated investment products give Sticco another way to separate rising cryptocurrency prices from the destination of new capital.
During one recent Wednesday session, Sticco said U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs received about $232 million, while Ether ETFs attracted roughly $192 million. XRP products brought in around $28 million, compared with approximately $15 million for HYPE products and $9 million for Solana.
By his calculation, close to nine dollars out of every ten went into Bitcoin and Ethereum. Weekly figures showed a similar concentration, with Bitcoin receiving about 71% of flows and Ethereum another 26%.
The concentration comes even as U.S. spot products have helped support Bitcoin’s recovery. A previous report on ETF demand found that U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had taken in approximately $1.9 billion across five consecutive inflow sessions by Aug. 24, while analysts said continued spot buying would be needed after forced short covering helped accelerate the initial breakout.
Sticco said the subsequent streak had reached eight consecutive sessions of net Bitcoin ETF inflows totaling about $2.8 billion, while Ether ETFs had also recorded eight positive sessions and more than $1 billion in inflows.
August Bitcoin ETF inflows had exceeded $3 billion by the time of his comments, making it the strongest month of 2026, according to Sticco. He said BlackRock had absorbed a large portion of the demand, including around $1.3 billion during the previous week.
“Eight straight sessions of regulated spot creations is not what a short squeeze produces,” he said.
The ETF numbers, however, require another distinction when assessing how much new institutional money has entered Bitcoin.
Sticco said net assets held by the funds had climbed from roughly $77 billion in mid-August to just above $99 billion by Tuesday, an increase of about $22 billion. Actual net inflows during the eight-session streak totaled only around $2.8 billion.
Much of the difference came from Bitcoin’s rising price increasing the value of assets already held by the funds, he said, rather than investors supplying another $22 billion in fresh capital.
Earlier in August, five consecutive inflow sessions had brought approximately $853.5 million into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs between Aug. 3 and Aug. 7, reversing withdrawals recorded during the preceding week.
Sticco also cautioned against viewing August in isolation. He said spot Bitcoin ETFs lost roughly $5.4 billion during the first half of 2026 and remained about $2.5 billion in negative territory for the year despite the latest inflows.
ETF demand is clearer than derivatives positioning
Separating institutional buying from leverage requires looking at different parts of the market, according to Sticco.
ETF flows and market depth measure demand, while funding rates, futures basis, and open interest give more information about trader positioning. Sticco said falling open interest alongside rising prices can indicate shorts are closing rather than new buyers entering.
He declined to characterize current open interest as either bullish or bearish because publicly available readings differed. Some datasets quote open interest in Bitcoin while others measure its dollar value, which can produce different trends when BTC itself moves sharply.
Market depth presents a similar problem. Sticco described depth as one of the most useful measures for institutional participation because it shows how much capital can enter or exit without materially moving the market.
“Price tells you what the last trade cleared at. Depth tells you what the next big one will cost.”
Available public depth figures were not current enough for Sticco to say confidently how much liquidity had recovered. He pointed instead to the damage following the October 2025 deleveraging event, when he said an estimated $10 billion to $20 billion in leveraged positions were erased and Bitcoin’s top-of-book depth on major venues fell more than 90% intraday.
Market makers subsequently reduced resting liquidity after getting caught with inventory while hedges were force-closed, according to Sticco, leaving order books at their thinnest since 2022.
For Sticco, the institutional side of crypto has therefore developed faster than the liquidity supporting the underlying market.
U.S. policy and Treasury conditions remain part of the rally
Macroeconomic conditions have also played an important role in the latest advance, according to Sticco, who pointed to the U.S. Treasury’s Aug. 19 decision to increase long-dated debt buybacks as an important catalyst.
The Treasury doubled the maximum size of certain long-end liquidity support buybacks from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. The Treasury announcement was followed by falling long-term yields and an 8.2% Bitcoin advance from an intraday low around $64,100 to approximately $69,500 in less than 12 hours.
Sticco said Bitcoin’s close relationship with software stocks during the move shows how crypto has become more connected to U.S. macro conditions. As interest-rate expectations later changed and short-term yields rose, Bitcoin surrendered some of the gains even though the legislative situation in Washington had not materially changed.
Congress presents another variable for U.S. investors. Sticco pointed to the CLARITY Act, which would establish a statutory division of responsibilities between the SEC and CFTC for parts of the digital asset market and create a federal framework affecting exchanges, brokers, dealers, and custody.
The Senate Banking Committee advanced the legislation 15-9 in May, with Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks joining Republicans. Sticco, who attended the markup as part of Cryptex’s policy work, said both Democrats made clear at the time that their committee votes did not guarantee support on the Senate floor without progress on unresolved provisions.
A Sept. 15 cloture vote requires 60 votes to move the legislation forward. Previous coverage of the negotiations identified ethics rules, stablecoin rewards, and financial-crime provisions among the issues still unresolved ahead of the procedural vote.
For regulated index products, Sticco pointed in particular to provisions covering CFTC registration of digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers. Capital, asset-segregation, surveillance, and customer-protection requirements could increase the number of regulated venues capable of supporting assets used in exchange-traded products, he said.
Sticco also cited custody provisions and changes affecting financial holding companies as potentially important for institutions, while arguing that statutory classification of digital assets would give index providers more certainty than relying on agency interpretations that future regulators could change.
Policy expectations, however, have weakened even as cryptocurrency prices have risen. Sticco said Polymarket odds for the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026 had fallen from roughly 82% in February to around 25% in late August, while Galaxy Research placed the probability closer to 10%.
The Sept. 15 vote will also fall on the first day of the Federal Reserve’s Sept. 15-16 meeting, leaving two major U.S. policy events scheduled within the same period.
Unresolved Senate negotiations include ethics and conflict-of-interest rules involving government officials, possible secondary enforcement authority for state attorneys general, illicit-finance provisions and banking-industry objections to crypto exchanges paying yield on stablecoin balances, according to Sticco.
