Bitcoin crossed $80,000 overnight for the first time since May, then got immediately turned away at $81,000 — the exact level of its 50-week moving average. That rejection matters more than the round number: in 11 of the 13 completed bitcoin bear markets on record, reclaiming the 50-week average on a weekly close was the clearest signal that the bear market was actually over. Bulls have not yet cleared that bar. Meanwhile, Stanley Druckenmiller — the billionaire investor who mentored Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — has published an op-ed arguing that the very bond buyback program that triggered last week’s rally is a mistake. His argument: governments can temporarily cap yields, but they cannot beat market fundamentals, and the attempt removes the market’s natural check on fiscal recklessness. Bitcoin is consolidating near $79,000. Warsh speaks at Jackson Hole Friday. Stay alert.
CoinDesk Disclosure: The information contained in this newsletter, and any information linked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency or digital assets.
L1.co Disclosure: This material is for informational purposes only, and the content contained herein should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to sell or buy any asset, strategy, or product. Investing in digital assets involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principal.
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Bitcoin’s surging price faces one key level that could signal if the bear market is really over.
Bitcoin crossed $80,000 overnight — the first time since May — then was immediately rejected at $81,000, the location of its 50-week simple moving average, currently sitting near $81,087. The technical significance of that level goes well beyond the number itself. Galaxy Research has studied 13 completed bitcoin bear markets and found that in 11 of them, reclaiming the 50-week moving average on a weekly close was one of the clearest signals that the bear-market low was already in. In the two exceptions, the price went on to make new lows. “If BTCUSD reclaims it on weekly close, history suggests the bear market would likely be over,” Galaxy Research said. The bulls have not yet cleared that bar. Bitcoin’s seven-day rate of change — a measure of rolling weekly momentum — currently reads near 25%, a level that has appeared rarely over the past five years and has typically been followed by a pause rather than an immediate continuation higher. Dan Tapiero, founder of multibillion-dollar private equity firm 50T Funds, framed the bull case in unambiguous terms: he described the move as an “extreme momentous break up in BTC and complex,” said the cycle low is already in and added that the hardest thing now is to buy here if you are not already long, because “greatest amount of pain is back to 100k immediately.” The U.S. also widened sanctions against Iran on Tuesday, expanding them to cover crypto exchanges, brokers and service providers alongside gold, shipping and technology — a move that could crimp Iranian access to crypto rails and reduce one source of selling pressure on the market. Meanwhile a $2.9 million options bet placed Monday targets BTC above $82,000 by September 4.
The man who taught Bessent everything says the buyback driving bitcoin higher is a mistake.
Stanley Druckenmiller — the billionaire investor who runs Duquesne Capital Management and served as a mentor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — has published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal delivering a direct rebuke of the Treasury’s $4 billion bond buyback program, the very measure that triggered last week’s crypto and gold rally. His argument is a fundamental one: markets are better at setting prices than governments, and when a government tries to suppress bond yields below what fundamentals justify, it does not solve the underlying problem — it makes it worse. “Governments defending prices against fundamentals always lose,” Druckenmiller wrote. “Rising interest rates are a signal of trouble ahead. Artificially suppressing it heightens the danger.” The specific mechanics of his critique: the current 10-year Treasury yield of 4.70% is not restrictive, he argues, because it roughly matches the economy’s nominal growth rate. Financial conditions become tight only when yields rise above the growth rate. Buying back bonds to push yields lower from a level that is already appropriate makes no fiscal sense. What elevated yields are doing, Druckenmiller contends, is performing a useful function: acting as a market check on how much the government can borrow. With U.S. federal debt having crossed $40 trillion for the first time and running persistent large deficits, that check matters. Remove it through buybacks, he says, and you also remove the pressure on elected officials to control spending. The implications for crypto and gold are double-edged. Druckenmiller’s critique of the buyback is bullish for hard assets in the long run — if the Treasury cannot sustainably cap yields, the inflation and dollar-erosion risk that makes bitcoin and gold attractive remains in place. But in the near term, if markets come to agree with Druckenmiller that the buyback will ultimately fail and yields will resume rising, the dollar relief that drove last week’s rally could reverse.
A bitcoin short squeeze for the ages — and why the data says the rally is structurally healthy.
When bitcoin surges 25% in a week, the usual assumption is that traders are piling in with leverage, creating a frothy market that could unwind violently. This time the data tells a different story — and a more constructive one. Bitcoin-denominated futures open interest has actually fallen to 587,584 BTC, a five-month low, down from 645,760 BTC on August 14 according to Glassnode. That matters because measuring OI in bitcoin terms removes the mechanical inflation that a rising dollar price would otherwise cause. In plain English: as the spot price climbed, the total number of active futures contracts shrank. That pattern is the signature of a short squeeze, not a speculative blow-off. Shorts that had been betting on a continued decline were either closed voluntarily as losses mounted, or were forcibly liquidated by exchanges when margin ran out — and closing a short requires buying the underlying asset, which pushed prices further up. The data confirms the mechanism: billions of dollars in short positions were liquidated during the move. The other key metric is the funding rate in perpetual futures, which shows whether the cost of holding long positions is elevated. It is not: annualized funding rates have held below 10%, indicating only moderate bullish positioning. A truly crowded long trade — the kind that tends to unwind badly — would push funding rates significantly higher. The structural picture has an additional positive layer. Crypto-margined open interest — futures contracts collateralized by bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies rather than cash — has fallen to an all-time low of roughly 52,000 BTC, now just 11% of total market activity. This matters because crypto-backed collateral creates dangerous feedback loops: when prices fall, collateral values fall too, triggering more liquidations and amplifying declines. The shift to cash-margined dominance means the market is less volatile structurally, and less likely to suffer the kind of cascading liquidations that characterized earlier bear markets.
CoinDesk Disclosure: The information contained in this newsletter, and any information linked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency or digital assets.
L1.co Disclosure: This material is for informational purposes only, and the content contained herein should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to sell or buy any asset, strategy, or product. Investing in digital assets involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principal.
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