⏱️ The Clock

Last bottom: Nov 21, 2022 · Last top: Oct 6, 2025 at $126,198
Bottom → Top: 1,050 days · Top → today: Day 335
Historical top → bottom: 363 days (2018) · 376 days (2022)
Projected window: Oct 4 – Oct 17, 2026 (28–41 days out)

⚠️ Sample size: two. And with price already 37% off June’s $58K low, we may be watching the “bottom came early” scenario — where the window becomes a date the cycle already beat.

📊 The Seven Signals

Score: six green, one amber, zero red — the strongest of the cycle. The 50-month row upgraded from “pending” to confirmed this week: August’s monthly candle closed above the line.

🔬 The Deeper Gauges

📅 THE STAMP — the headline. August closed +24% and above the 50-month EMA— the monthly trend-flip this Clock has counted toward since Day 300. A daily wick is weather; a monthly close is the trend itself turning. This is the single strongest piece of evidence all cycle that June was the bottom. ✅

💸 SOPR — holding above 1.0. Sellers in profit and confident. ✅
🔨 Puell Multiple — recovered off the miner-capitulation lows as price ran. ✅
⏳ Bitcoin Days Destroyed — quiet; dormant-coin activity near multi-year lows. Ancient hands still sitting still. ✅
📊 VanEck ChainCheck — Sept–Nov accumulation-transition window intact.

⚖️ The Three Flags — All Flying

Weeks ago I set three confirmation flags. Track them:

1. ✅ SOPR above 1.0 — flying

2. ✅ Monthly close above the 50-month EMA — printed Aug 31

3. ✅ $71,500 (200-day) holding as support — price far above it

All three now fly. Add Strategy’s return (”We’re Back,” +4,603 BTC), the strongest ETF day since January, and Joe Carlasare’s read on What Bitcoin Did (Sep 1) — “you could have a massive cycle here that will shock people” — and the bottom-in case is as strong as it’s been.

⚖️ So Why Keep The Amber Lit?

Because a confirmed trend flip is not a cleared road. Three honest checks remain:

🧱 The $80K wall is still contested. BTC hit $82,240 Friday and got slapped back under $80K on the hot jobs print. Confirmation on the monthly chart, rejection on the daily. It needs to clear and hold $82–85K to prove the breakout.
🌡️ The macro got harder, not easier. August jobs came in 3× expected, Sept hike odds bounced to ~60%, the 10-year hit 4.80%. Friday’s CPI (Sep 11) is now the real verdictbefore the Sep 16 FOMC.
🐻 The deepest hands never broke.STH/LTH-MVRV still hasn’t converged — with price up, long-term holders are more in profit, not less. Voices like Token Bay’s Gazmararian and chartist Peter Brandt still can’t be ruled out on “one final flush.”

🎯 What Would Change The Read — the Ladder

🟢 Confirms the bottom fully: a daily close above $82,240 → then $85K · CPI cool Friday · $80K flips to firm support

🔴 Warns of a flush:

• Loses $78,500 (monthly open / Kaz’s demand zone) → caution

• Falls to $74,964 (EMA20) → still a normal pullback

• Sinks to $72,000 (Wintermute’s line) / $71,545 (200-day) → the lines that must hold

• Cracks $62–64K → the flush the bears want · sub-$58K = a lower low

The Bottom Line

This is the week the Cycle Clock earned its keep: the monthly trend-flip stamped, all three confirmation flags flying, six of seven signals green — the strongest read since Day 300, and the clearest evidence yet that June’s $58K was the cycle bottom. But confirmation isn’t a cleared runway. $80K is still a contested wall, the Fed just got a hawkish jobs print, and the deepest hands never capitulated — so Friday’s CPI, not the stamp, is the near-term decider. The trend has turned; the road ahead still has a gate on it. We stack steady, keep dry powder for a dip to the high-$70s (or, if the bears are right, the low-$60s), and watch CPI. The stamp is in. The story isn’t over.

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator ⚓

💬 Quote of the Week: “We’re Back.” — Michael Saylor, as Strategy ended a 10-week selling streak and bought 4,603 BTC ($370M)

🎵 Song of the Week: “I’m Still Standing” — Elton John — clean, defiant, “looking like a true survivor” — the week in one line.

📊 Week In One Snapshot

🟧 BTC: $78,500 Mon → dip $76,600 (Wed) → rip $82,240 (Fri high) → jobs shock → $79,581 Sat (+~1.5% week, wild range)
🔵 ETH: $2,440 → $2,500 (ETH ETFs on an 11-day inflow streak — quiet leader)
🌐 XRP: $1.37 → $1.37 (flat, chopped with the tape)
🟣 SOL: $103 → $101 (held $100 all week)

The Stamp: August closed +24% (best month since Nov 2024) and above the 50-month EMA — the trend-flip confirmation
The Rip: Fed Gov. Waller hinted at holding rates → BTC surged past $82K on a $730M ETF day (biggest since January)
The Slap: August jobs +162K — 3× the ~56K consensus → hike fears revived → BTC fell back under $80K

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 334 of 363–376 (full analysis tomorrow in The Cycle Clock)

📡 PART ONE — THE WEEK THAT WAS

⚓ The 5-Day Arc

📅 Mon — The Stamp. August closed +24%, its best month since Nov 2024, and crucially above the 50-month EMA— the trend-flip confirmation the Cycle Clock tracked since Day 300. Strategy ended a 10-week selling streak (+4,603 BTC); Saylor posted “We’re Back.” But Sept hike odds jumped to 64%.

⚖️ Tue — The Tug-of-War. New month, and the debasement bid met the hawkish-Fed headwind. BTC held ~$78K, then slid under $77K on an oil surge — yet ETFs still added $142M. Long-term bullishness vs. short-term tightening, live.

🛢️ Wed — The Dip. BTC fell to the mid-$70Ks on $90 oil, Iran strikes, and a firm dollar — but dropped only a thirdof what the alts did. Relative strength held; Wintermute flagged $72K weekly as the line.

🏳️ Thu — The Turn. BTC held its EMA cluster all morning (dominance ~60%, a treasury went Bitcoin-only), then broke back above $80K in the afternoon as Fed Gov. Waller hinted he’d hold rates. Bitcoin ETFs posted their best day of 2026.

🎢 Fri — Rip, Then Slap. BTC ripped to a four-month high of $82,240 on Waller’s dovishness and a $730M ETF day— then the August jobs report (+162K, 3× expected)revived hike fears and knocked it back under $80K. Good news, bad reaction.

🧠 The Quiet Signal

This was a week of two clocks running at once — and both matter. The slow clock stamped the biggest confirmation of the cycle: August closed above the 50-month EMA, the monthly trend-flip the Clock has counted toward since Day 300, with Strategy’s return as the exclamation point. That doesn’t un-happen because of a hot jobs print. The fast clock, meanwhile, whipsawed the tape all week — oil down to the mid-$70s, Waller up through $82K, jobs back under $80K — a violent range that netted out barely changed. The lesson the whole week taught is the one that separates the calm from the frantic: don’t let the fast clock overwrite the slow one. A monthly trend flip is structure; a jobs-day candle is weather. BTC took an oil shock, a war headline, a hawkish revival, and a blowout payroll — and ended the week green, above every key support, trend intact. It got stamped, then tested, and it’s still standing. Next Friday’s CPI is the fast clock’s next tick. The slow clock already turned.

🌅 PART TWO — THE WEEK AHEAD

📅 What’s Coming

📊 FRIDAY, SEP 11 — AUGUST CPI. The swing data point. Waller said he’d hold rates if inflation keeps cooling — so CPI, not jobs, decides the Sept 16 tone. Cool = the rally’s fuel; hot = the hawks win. 🏛️ SEP 15–16 — FOMC. Hike odds bounced back toward ~60% on the jobs beat. The rally runs on liquidity; this is the gate. 🧲 $78,000 — Sept 18 options max-pain. A magnet if the dip extends. 📊 Watch: do Friday’s $730M-ETF-day buyers add on the dip, and does $80K reclaim as support?

📊 The Levels

🟢 Support: $78,000 (max-pain) → $77,000 → $74,964 (EMA20) → $72,000 (Wintermute’s line)
🔴 Resistance: $80,000 (reclaim) → $82,240 (week high) → $85,000

⚓ The Bottom Line

The week’s headline was the whipsaw — a dip to the mid-$70s, a rip to $82K, a jobs-shock slap back under $80K — but the story was the stamp: August closed the monthly trend flip, and no single payroll print undoes that. BTC absorbed oil, war, a hawkish revival, and a blowout jobs number and still finished green, above support, trend intact. Next Friday’s CPI is the real verdict before the FOMC. Stamped, then tested — and still standing. Rest the body, rest the mind. Tomorrow the Cycle Clock reads Day 335; Monday we go back to work. ⚓

🌱 Powered By Huel

Complete nutrition. Zero decisions. A week that whipsawed from $76K to $82K and back is a lesson in ignoring the fast clock and trusting the system you set. Huel is complete food in one step: protein, carbs, fats, 26 vitamins and minerals, no thinking required. It removes the food decision the way automated DCA removes the trade decision — decide once, let it run, and don’t let a noisy week knock you off the plan.New to Huel? Use referral code REF-PAULM4588 at checkout. Not medical advice. Just complete fuel for a body built to carry the stack. 🌱

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” — Albert Einstein

🎵 Song of the Day: “Mad World” — Gary Jules — clean, spare, the sound of a world where good news reads as bad.

📡 THE NEWS

📊 Market Snapshot

(Live · Friday Evening · CoinDesk + DailyCoin + CryptoTimes)

🟧 BTC: $79,700 (high $82,240 → jobs shock → −2.7% to ~$79.7K) ⚠️
🔵 ETH: $2,500 (held up better — still green over 24h)
🌐 XRP: $1.37 (gave back with BTC)
🟣 SOL: $101 (held $100)

The Print: August payrolls +162,000 — nearly 3× the ~56K consensus · July revised from −23K up to +21K · unemployment 4.1%
The Reaction: hot jobs → hike fears revived → 10-year yield to 4.80%, dollar up → BTC, gold, stocks all fell
The Real Test: next Friday’s August CPI is now the swing data point before the Sept 16 FOMC
The Cushion: ETFs took $730M Thursday — biggest day since January (the question: do those buyers add on this dip?)

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 333 of 363–376 (bottom window Oct 4–17)

Support: $78,000 (Sept 18 options max-pain) → $77,000 → $74,964 (EMA20) → $72,000
Resistance: $80,000 (reclaim) → $82,240 (today’s high) → $84,000

⚓ Three Bitcoin Stories That Defined Today

📊 JOBS TRIPLED EXPECTATIONS — AND BITCOIN FELL. Per CoinDesk: the U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in August, nearly three times the ~56K consensus — the strongest hiring since March — and July’s scary −23K was revised up to +21K. Strong economy, and yet BTC tumbled from a four-month high of $82,240 to below $80,000. Why does good news hurt? Because a hot labor market hands the hawks ammunition — it revives September rate-hike fears, lifts yields (10-year to 4.80%) and the dollar, and tightens the liquidity this whole rally runs on. Gold fell too. It’s not “the economy is bad for Bitcoin” — it’s “a strong economy means a tighter Fed, and a tighter Fed pressures every scarce asset.”

🔄 THE $82K CEILING HELD — THE BREAKOUT ROUND-TRIPPED. Per DailyCoin: BTC reached $82,240, its highest since May, then fell ~2.7% to below $79,300 as the jobs data hit — the $82K zone acting as a clear ceiling on the first real test. This morning’s “wall becomes floor” thesis got complicated: $80K didn’t hold as cleanly as bulls wanted, and the breakout gave back its gains within hours. The honest read: the reclaim needs another attempt.Roughly $456M of shorts were squeezed on Thursday’s run-up, and once BTC broke back below $80K, leverage flushed the other way. The level’s contested, not conquered.

⚖️ NEXT FRIDAY’S CPI IS THE ONE THAT MATTERS. Per CoinDesk: today’s jobs print is “another data point in favor of the hawks,” but the Fed’s actual swing factor is next Friday’s August CPI report. Fed Governor Waller said Thursday he’d support holding rates if inflation keeps cooling — which is what sparked this week’s surge — so the September 16 decision now hinges on that inflation number, not today’s jobs. One data point rarely decides a trend; the market’s just repricing between now and CPI. DWF Labs flags $78K as the Sept 18 options max-pain — a magnet to watch if the dip extends. The verdict’s a week out.

🍰 Powered By Cake Wallet

Your keys. Your coins. Your privacy. A single jobs number swung Bitcoin $2,000 in five minutes today — a reminder of how much price answers to forces you’ll never control. Custody isn’t one of them: a hot payroll print can move the number, not who holds your keys. Cake Wallet is open-source, non-custodial, and built so the keys live with you — with native Monero support for the privacy-minded. Not financial advice. Just sound money, self-custodied. 🔑

🌅 THE FRIDAY THOUGHT — CAREER & EDUCATION (PM EDITION)

When Good News Gets A Bad Reaction

The jobs number came in three times as strong as expected today — unambiguously good news for the economy — and Bitcoin fell. If that seems backwards, it is, until you understand the machine underneath: the market wasn’t reacting to “are jobs good?” It was reacting to “what do good jobs mean for the Fed?” The surface event and the thing that actually drove the response were two different things.

Here’s the Career lesson hiding in it: when a “good” thing gets a bad reaction — or a “bad” thing gets a good one — that’s your signal that you don’t yet understand what the system actually rewards. The junior analyst is baffled that strong jobs tanked the market. The seasoned one knows the market trades the second-order effect — rates, liquidity — not the headline. The gap between “this should’ve gone well” and “it didn’t” is exactly where the real understanding lives, if you’re curious enough to chase it instead of just being confused by it.

Don’t dismiss the backwards reaction as “the market being irrational.” Ask what it’s really responding to. That question is how you graduate from reading headlines to reading systems.

🔍 A backwards reaction reveals what the system truly rewards — chase it. 🧠 Trade the second-order effect — the headline is rarely the driver. ⚓ Confusion is a doorway — “that should’ve worked” is where the lesson is.

Good news, bad reaction. Don’t call it irrational — ask what it’s really pricing. ⚓

🎯 Your Move

One question: Where in your work has a “good” thing gotten a surprisingly bad reaction — and did you dismiss it as irrational, or dig into what the system was actually rewarding?

One challenge this weekend: Find one “that should’ve gone well but didn’t” moment from your own career, and trace the second-order effect you missed. The gap between what you expected and what happened is a free lesson in how your world actually works. Chase the confusion; that’s where the understanding hides.

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator

WATCH THIS!

Bitcoin finally broke through $80,000 yesterday and briefly reached roughly $81,900. Then, almost perfectly timed with me recording this morning, it dropped back toward $79,200.

So despite the excitement, my opinion hasn’t really changed. We’re still sideways.

The bulls can point to $731 million flowing into spot Bitcoin ETFs, falling Treasury yields, less leverage in the futures market, and Bitcoin finally getting back above $80K. Those are all legitimate positives.

But I want confirmation. Bitcoin still hasn’t broken the resistance around $82,800 that I’ve been talking about. Until we get through that level and hold it, I’m not ready to declare that the next leg of the bull market has begun.

Why Bitcoin Jumped Above $81K

The clearest driver yesterday was ETF demand.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs brought in approximately $731 million, according to the figures discussed on today’s show. BlackRock accounted for roughly $454 million, ARK approximately $138 million, and Fidelity around $74 million.

That’s real buying pressure.

The second factor was the Fed. Governor Christopher Waller suggested that inflation has improved enough for the Fed to consider leaving rates unchanged at the September 15-16 meeting.

I find that interesting because it sounds different from the more hawkish message we’ve been hearing from Kevin Warsh.

I’m not sure what to make of that yet. Is Waller putting this idea into the market to see how investors react? Is this simply disagreement within the Fed? Either way, I wouldn’t assume a rate hike is suddenly off the table. Prediction markets, according to the figures discussed on the show, were still assigning roughly a 60% to 65% probability to an increase.

The third positive is the bond market.

The 10-year Treasury yield pulled back toward 4.75% after reaching approximately 4.82% earlier in the week.

That’s moving in the right direction.

The number I’m watching is 5%.

A 30-year yield above 5% is expensive, but the 10-year crossing 5% would concern me considerably more. That’s where borrowing conditions become increasingly difficult across the economy.

And there’s a larger government-finance problem sitting underneath this.

The federal government has an enormous amount of debt that will need to be refinanced. If debt issued at lower rates gets replaced with debt carrying significantly higher yields, interest expense goes up without taxpayers receiving another road, school, aircraft carrier or anything else in return. It’s simply the cost of servicing debt.

Combine that with annual federal deficits approaching $2 trillion, and I don’t think this is something we should dismiss because Bitcoin had a good day.

$82,800 Is the Level I Want to See

Here’s my Bitcoin map.

On the upside, $82,800 is the next serious test.

If Bitcoin can reclaim the important moving averages around this area and establish $80,000 as support, then I think $90,000 comes into play.

After that, the high $90,000s and $100,000 become the next psychological fight. I’ve said before that I expect $100K to be a significant barrier.

But none of that has happened yet.

On the downside, I’m still watching roughly $75,700 as the first important support and then approximately $71,000 below it.

There is absolutely no reason Bitcoin can’t go back in that direction.

That’s why I remain more cautious than some of the other people at Daily Crypto News. Paul is generally more bullish than I am. Craig Cobb gives us the technical view every Monday. I think having those different perspectives is useful because nobody should be looking for someone who simply tells them what they already want to hear.

There is another encouraging sign, though. The current breakout is occurring with less leverage than some previous rallies. Futures-market leverage is reportedly around a five-month low.

That’s healthier than watching Bitcoin rise primarily because traders are piling into increasingly leveraged positions.

When Bitcoin Goes Up, Bitcoin-Adjacent Stocks Can Move Even Faster

Yesterday gave us another example of something I’ve talked about repeatedly.

When Bitcoin goes up, Bitcoin-adjacent companies can really move.

Coinbase jumped roughly 10% Thursday, Robinhood gained approximately 16%, and Strategy and Circle posted double-digit gains as Bitcoin moved through $80,000, according to the figures discussed today. Strategy’s preferred shares also moved back toward their intended $100-per-share value after falling as low as roughly $69.

This is why I keep watching these companies alongside Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin eventually breaks its previous all-time high and starts entering genuinely new price territory, I think investors will begin looking for companies that provide leveraged exposure to the broader crypto economy.

That doesn’t mean they’re safer than Bitcoin. They’re companies, which means you also have management, execution, regulation, debt, dilution and every other business risk.

But the upside can also move differently.

Strive CEO Matt Cole says his company could finish 2026 as the second-largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder behind Strategy. Strive shares reached a year-to-date high Thursday as investors repriced Bitcoin treasury companies alongside the Bitcoin rally.

If Bitcoin eventually moves beyond its previous highs, I think some capital will rotate into these adjacent companies as investors look for bigger percentage moves.

That’s where things could get interesting.

Coinbase is also asking the SEC for approval around 24/7 stock perpetual trading.

My reaction is pretty simple: why aren’t we doing more 24/7 trading already?

Crypto has demonstrated that markets can operate continuously. Traditional markets already have extended-hours trading, but the books and settlement infrastructure still revolve around traditional market sessions.

I understand the counterargument. Traditional exchanges use circuit breakers and trading halts because sometimes markets need a cooling-off period. If something collapses suddenly, stopping trading gives people time to process what is happening rather than allowing panic to feed on itself indefinitely.

That’s legitimate.

But the broader direction still seems obvious to me. Markets are moving toward longer trading hours, tokenized assets and increasingly continuous settlement.

The other regulatory issue I’m watching is the CLARITY Act. September could be an important window because Congress is approaching the midterms, and lawmakers may become increasingly reluctant to take difficult votes as campaigning takes over.

Crypto Prices

And then Bitcoin decided to demonstrate exactly why I’m still cautious.

When I started preparing today’s show, Bitcoin was above $81,000. By the time I reached the prices, it had fallen toward $79,200, dropping approximately 2.4% in an hour.

I don’t know what caused that move yet, so I’m not going to invent an explanation.

Ethereum is around $2,450, up approximately 1.3% over 24 hours but down around 3% in the previous hour.

BNB is approximately $714 and also fell during the last hour.

XRP is around $1.41, still up roughly 2% over 24 hours despite dropping around 3% in the previous hour.

Solana is approximately $101, down around 2.4% over the previous hour.

TRON is around $0.328, down approximately 0.3% over the hour.

Hyperliquid is approximately $85.41, down around 1.8% over the hour.

Zcash is around $988, down approximately 2.2% over the previous hour but still up an enormous 17% over 24 hours.

Total Crypto Market Cap: approximately $2.86 trillion, up around 1.1% over 24 hours.

Fear & Greed: 75, Greed.

So yes, number went up.

We finally broke $80,000. ETF demand was strong. Treasury yields eased. Leverage looks relatively restrained. Bitcoin-adjacent stocks exploded higher.

Those are all bullish developments.

I’m still waiting for $82,800.

Get through there, reclaim the important moving averages, and turn $80K into the floor. Then I’m willing to start talking seriously about $90K.

Until then, the same downside levels remain in play, and the fact that Bitcoin dropped roughly $2,000 while I was preparing this podcast is a pretty good reminder of why I’m not calling the breakout early.

Happy HODLing

“The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.” — Tony Robbins

🎵 Song of the Day: “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” — Stevie Wonder — clean, joyful, the sound of showing up and following through.

📡 THE NEWS

📊 Market Snapshot

(Live · Thursday Evening · CoinDesk + Coinbase + Cryptonomist)

🟧 BTC: $80,974 (reclaimed $80K after holding EMAs all morning) 🚀
🔵 ETH: $2,430 (recovered with the move, still lagging BTC)
🌐 XRP: $1.36 (firmed off the lows)
🟣 SOL: $101 (held $100)

The Move: BTC held the EMA20/50/200 cluster this morning → broke back above $80,000 by afternoon
The Bid:Bitcoin ETFs recorded their best performance of 2026 · BTC dominance ~60% (capital consolidating into BTC)
Structure: RSI 66.7 (bullish, not overbought) · EMAs stacked bullish · MACD the lone cooling note
Watch: $80K must now hold as support to confirm the reclaim · Sept 15–16 FOMC

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 332 of 363–376 (bottom window Oct 4–17)

Support: $80,000 (reclaimed — must hold) → $77,000 → $74,964 (EMA20) → $72,000
Resistance: $81,479 (Aug high) → $84,000 → $86,381 (upper Bollinger)

⚓ Three Bitcoin Stories That Defined Today

🚀 BTC RECLAIMED $80K — THE MORNING’S PATIENCE PAID OFF. Per CoinDesk: after holding above its EMA cluster through a jittery, war-rattled morning, Bitcoin broke back above $80,000 to ~$80,974 by afternoon, up roughly 4% intraday. The level that rejected it four times last week gave way — this time on the back of held support, not a squeeze. It’s not confirmed until $80K becomes a floor rather than a ceiling, but reclaiming it after a week of rejections is the bulls answering the question. The base held in the morning; the breakout came in the afternoon. That sequence — hold, then move — is exactly how durable rallies are built.

🏦 BITCOIN ETFs POSTED THEIR BEST PERFORMANCE OF 2026. Per Coinbase: spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded their strongest performance of the year, the institutional bid roaring back exactly as BTC reclaimed $80K. This is the through-line of the whole week: while the tape wobbled on Iran and oil, the ETF money kept showing up — and today it showed up in force. The relationship between the relentless ETF bid and price resilience is now the market’s load-bearing wall. Capital consolidating into Bitcoin (dominance near 60%) plus record ETF demand is the structural fuel behind the afternoon’s breakout. The buyers who mean it were there.

🟢 THE STRUCTURE IS TEXTBOOK — RSI 66.7, EMAs STACKED, ROOM ABOVE. Per Cryptonomist: BTC is trading above its EMA20 ($74,964), EMA50 ($70,598), and EMA200 ($72,134), stacked in bullish order, with RSI at 66.7 — firmly bullish without being overbought — and Bollinger Bands still wide, leaving room toward $86K. The lone caution is a cooling MACD, a reminder not to lean too hard into euphoria. But the weight of the read is constructive: a trend intact, momentum resting, and a wall just reclaimed. The market answered the week’s doubt by holding its supports and pushing back through the level everyone was watching.

🍰 Powered By Cake Wallet

Your keys. Your coins. Your privacy. BTC reclaimed $80K and the ETFs are buying in force — but a fund holds your Bitcoin for you, with its own hours and pauses. Self-custody has no market close and no counterparty: yours at $77K this morning, yours at $81K tonight. Cake Wallet is open-source, non-custodial, and built so the keys live with you — with native Monero support for the privacy-minded. Not financial advice. Just sound money, self-custodied. 🔑

🌅 THE THURSDAY THOUGHT — RELATIONSHIPS (PM EDITION)

Held In The Morning, Moved In The Afternoon

This morning Bitcoin didn’t do anything exciting — it just held. Sat on its supports through a scary, uncertain open, refusing to break. And because it held in the quiet, it had the base to break out by afternoon. The unremarkable morning made the remarkable afternoon possible.

Relationships move on the exact same clock. The big moments — the ones that look like breakthroughs, the deepened trust, the person showing up huge when it counts — those are the afternoon. But they’re only possible because of the morning: the quiet, unremarkable holding you did when nothing was happening. The check-ins that felt like nothing. The showing up on the boring days. The trust deposited when there was no crisis to spend it on. You can’t break out in the afternoon of a relationship if you didn’t hold the line in its morning.

Nobody sees the morning. Everybody sees the afternoon. But the afternoon belongs entirely to the people who bothered with the morning.

🌅 Hold in the quiet mornings — that’s where the base gets built.
🚀 The breakthrough afternoon is earned in the boring morning.
⚓ No one skips the morning and keeps the afternoon.

BTC held, then moved. Tend the quiet mornings — the afternoons are made there. ⚓

🎯 Your Move

One question: Which relationship’s “morning” are you neglecting — the quiet, no-crisis maintenance — while hoping for an “afternoon” of deep trust you haven’t built the base for?

One challenge tonight: Do one unremarkable “morning” thing for a relationship that isn’t in crisis — a check-in, a small follow-through, a bit of presence with nothing riding on it. You’re not spending trust tonight; you’re building the base a future afternoon will draw on.

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator

WATCH THIS!

“Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.” — Matthew 6:34

🎵 Song of the Day: “Bridge Over Troubled Water” — Aretha Franklin — the soul version; clean, steady, carrying you over the churn. (Different take than the Simon & Garfunkel we ran — this one’s Aretha.)

📡 THE NEWS

📊 Market Snapshot

(Live · Wednesday Evening · CoinDesk + Yahoo + CoinStats)

🟧 BTC: $77,119 (chopping mid-$70Ks · thin $14B volume) ⚠️
🔵 ETH: $2,374 (-2% · fell further than BTC again)
🌐 XRP: $1.32 (-4% on the day)
🟣 SOL: $98.47 (-3.8%)

The Driver: Iran conflict reignited → risk-off across stocks, gold, crypto · oil elevated
The Line to Watch: Wintermute flags a weekly close below $72,000 as the level that raises real downside risk
Still Building: Franklin Templeton filed for two Bitcoin “DRIP” ETFs (dividends → BTC, targeting Sept launch) — another Wall Street on-ramp
F&G: cooling toward neutral · Sept 15–16 FOMC the next macro gate

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 331 of 363–376 (bottom window Oct 4–17)

Support: $76,000 → $74,000 → $72,000 (Wintermute’s line) → $71,545 (200-day)
Resistance: $78,000 → $79,200 → $80,000 (the wall)

⚓ Three Bitcoin Stories That Defined Today

🕊️ WAR HEADLINES DROVE A BROAD RISK-OFF — NOT A BITCOIN PROBLEM. Per Yahoo Finance: crypto fell as the Iran conflict reignited, pulling stocks, gold, and Bitcoin down together on thin holiday-week volume. This is the same read as this morning: when everything risk-sensitive sells on a geopolitical shock, it’s a macro tide, not a Bitcoin verdict. BTC held the mid-$70Ks and is still far above every structural support. A war headline moves the price; it doesn’t touch the 21-million supply cap or the thesis underneath it. The tape is anxious. The fundamentals aren’t.

📊 THE LINE THAT MATTERS: $72,000 ON A WEEKLY CLOSE. Per CoinStats/Wintermute: desks are watching a sustained weekly close below $72,000 as the level that would flip the short-term read from “healthy pullback” to “real downside risk,” with $70–74K and even $65–70K floated for a deeper correction. Right now BTC at ~$77K sits comfortably above that line — the medium-term trend reads bullish, the short-term vulnerable. Knowing your line in advance is how you stay calm when the headlines scream. $72K weekly is the one to watch; above it, this is noise.

🏦 FRANKLIN TEMPLETON IS STILL BUILDING — TWO NEW BTC ETFs FILED. Per CoinStats: even on a red, war-rattled day, Franklin Templeton filed for two Bitcoin “DRIP” ETFs that route stock-dividend proceeds straight into Bitcoin, targeting a September launch. It’s the quiet counter-melody to every scary headline: while the tape wobbles on geopolitics, the plumbing keeps getting laid — another regulated channel funneling traditional capital toward a fixed-supply asset. Price reacts to today’s war; the builders are building for the next decade. That gap is the whole Faith message.

🍰 Powered By Cake Wallet

Your keys. Your coins. Your privacy. War headlines, thin volume, a jittery tape — a lot of things you can’t control moved the price today. Custody isn’t one of them. Whatever tomorrow’s headline is, self-custodied Bitcoin stays yours — no war, no Fed, no middleman decides that. Cake Wallet is open-source, non-custodial, and built so the keys live with you — with native Monero support for the privacy-minded. Not financial advice. Just sound money, self-custodied. 🔑

🌅 THE WEDNESDAY THOUGHT — FAITH (PM EDITION)

Don’t Borrow Tomorrow’s Trouble

The Iran headlines hit today, and the tape did what anxious tapes do: it sold first and asked questions later. War, thin volume, red across the board. And the pull, watching it, is to spool the whole disaster movie forward — what if it escalates, what if $72K breaks, what if this is the start of the flush? That forward-spooling has a name, and it’s the exact thing today’s verse warns against: borrowing tomorrow’s trouble to pay for it with today’s peace.

Anxiety is almost never about the present moment — the present is usually survivable. It’s about the imagined future: the escalation that hasn’t happened, the level that hasn’t broken, the loss you’re pre-living. And here’s the cruel math of it — you pay the emotional cost of every disaster you rehearse, whether or not it ever arrives. Most never do. You spent the peace anyway.

Faith isn’t pretending the risk isn’t there. It’s refusing to pre-suffer it. Handle today’s actual thing — hold your line, keep your plan — and let tomorrow carry its own weight when it comes.

🌥️ Don’t pre-live the disaster — you pay for every one you rehearse.
📅 Handle today’s real thing; leave tomorrow’s to tomorrow.
⚓ Anxiety is a tax on a future that usually never arrives.

The tape borrowed tomorrow’s trouble today. Don’t join it. Tomorrow can carry itself. ⚓

🎯 Your Move

One question: How much of what’s weighing on you tonight is actually happening — versus a tomorrow you’re pre-living and pre-paying for?

One challenge tonight: Name one worry that’s about tomorrow, not today, and set it down — literally tell yourself you’ll pick it up if and when it’s real. Handle only what today actually put in front of you. The future you’re dreading usually never shows; don’t spend tonight’s peace on it.

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator

WATCH THIS!

Bitcoin is trading around $77,000, but today’s bigger stories are happening underneath the price. Wall Street’s largest banks are preparing their own stablecoin infrastructure, traditional stocks are moving onto blockchain rails, Bitcoin miners continue converting their power and data-center assets toward AI, and crypto developers are already preparing for threats from quantum computing and increasingly capable AI systems.

The common thread is infrastructure. Crypto is becoming more integrated with traditional finance and AI at the same time, and that creates opportunities as well as new risks.

Wall Street Is Coming for Stablecoins and Tokenized Markets

Twenty-one financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citi and Deutsche Bank, are working toward launching a U.S. dollar stablecoin through a new company in the first half of 2027. The project reportedly began with 10 institutions and has now more than doubled in size, with the group also considering other G7 currencies, beginning with the euro.

The obvious goal is to compete with companies like Tether and Circle while moving more traditional banking activity onto stablecoin rails.

Can they take over the existing stablecoin market?

I don’t think so.

If you’re already using Tether or Circle because they solve a problem your bank doesn’t solve, I don’t know why you’d suddenly get excited about a Goldman Sachs or Deutsche Bank stablecoin. Institutional customers are different. Banks could move enormous amounts of internal settlement and corporate activity onto these rails, reduce costs and make their existing businesses more efficient.

But there’s another issue I’m watching. The CLARITY Act debate has included restrictions around stablecoin yield. I wonder whether we’re watching the beginnings of regulatory capture. If non-bank stablecoin issuers have their hands tied on yield while banks can offer customers points, rewards or some other economic incentive through the broader banking relationship, that could give the banks an enormous competitive advantage.

That’s something worth watching rather than assuming all stablecoin issuers will ultimately compete under identical rules.

Traditional stocks are also moving further onto blockchain infrastructure. The London Stock Exchange Group is working with Kraken parent Payward on tokenized versions of UK-listed stocks using Kraken’s xStocks infrastructure. The plan is eventually to connect those assets with LSEG’s proposed 24-hour trading venue, expected in 2027 subject to regulatory approval.

The technology pitch is straightforward: longer trading hours, global access and potentially cheaper settlement.

Robinhood’s blockchain experiment is moving in the same direction. Decentralized exchange volume has reached approximately $1.6 billion, while activity around Robinhood Chain has also benefited Arbitrum. What makes Robinhood particularly interesting is the combination of crypto-native trading infrastructure with tokenized traditional financial assets.

We’re slowly watching the distinction between “crypto markets” and “traditional markets” get blurrier.

Bitcoin Mining Infrastructure Keeps Becoming AI Infrastructure

Hut 8 is another example of the Bitcoin mining industry’s enormous AI pivot.

Its Texas data-center campus is connected to Anthropic’s roughly $35 billion cloud agreement with Lambda, and Hut 8 has two long-term leases at the site worth approximately $19.6 billion, according to the figures discussed in today’s show. That figure is roughly 260 times the company’s most recent quarterly revenue.

From the company’s perspective, the decision isn’t particularly complicated.

They built infrastructure expecting Bitcoin mining to be the opportunity. AI companies now desperately need the same power, land, grid connections and data-center infrastructure.

If somebody is willing to pay you considerably more for infrastructure you already own, you pivot.

We’ve been talking about this repeatedly because I think it’s becoming one of the most important structural changes in Bitcoin mining. These aren’t necessarily just Bitcoin companies anymore. Some are becoming power and data-center companies capable of moving capacity toward whichever computing market offers the best economics.

That doesn’t mean Bitcoin mining disappears. It means the value of the infrastructure may increasingly be determined by what else it can do.

The SEC is confronting a similar technological shift from the regulatory side. Transfer-agent rules dating back to the 1970s are being reconsidered to account for tokenized securities, distributed ledgers, smart contracts and AI.

Welcome to government.

The financial infrastructure has changed dramatically while portions of the regulatory architecture governing it are still based on a world that existed before the personal computer.

Crypto Is Preparing for Quantum Computing and AI Attacks

Ripple developers are already preparing the XRP Ledger for a future in which quantum computers become capable of threatening today’s cryptography.

We’re not at “Q Day” yet. There is still enormous uncertainty about how many sufficiently stable, error-corrected qubits would actually be necessary to mount practical attacks against cryptographic systems, and simply counting the raw qubits in today’s machines doesn’t answer that question.

But I reject the idea that quantum computing should be dismissed because it hasn’t fulfilled every prediction people made about it.

We do this with technology constantly.

Virtual reality was supposedly overhyped because everybody isn’t sitting at home wearing a headset all day. That doesn’t mean the underlying technology isn’t impressive or useful. VR and related systems have applications in manufacturing, logistics, training and other specialized environments.

Computing itself took decades to move from enormous specialized machines to something ordinary families had sitting in their homes.

Quantum computing will take time too.

Researchers still have to improve the hardware, increase reliability, develop software and figure out which problems quantum computers are actually good at solving.

My basic view of technology is that once humans can conceptualize something that is actually consistent with the laws of physics, there’s a pretty good chance somebody eventually figures out how to build it.

So crypto developers should prepare before the threat arrives, not after.

Zcash developers are working on another side of cryptographic infrastructure: speed. They’re trying to reduce some private-transaction processing times from roughly three seconds to less than 200 milliseconds.

Three seconds is already pretty damn good. Milliseconds would make privacy technology considerably more practical for ordinary payments.

Then there’s AI.

OpenAI says its new Astro model has reached a critical cybersecurity capability threshold, meaning AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of finding previously unknown vulnerabilities and developing attacks against hardened systems with substantially less human assistance, according to the account discussed in today’s show.

For crypto, that’s worth taking seriously.

Smart contracts, bridges, wallets and exchanges secure enormous amounts of money, and much of the underlying software is publicly inspectable. AI that becomes dramatically better at finding vulnerabilities can help defenders audit software, but attackers get access to increasingly capable tools too.

If you’re running billions of dollars through publicly accessible code, get ready for that arms race.

Crypto Prices

Bitcoin is sitting around $77,330, down approximately 0.7% over 24 hours.

Ethereum is around $2,414, down approximately 1.1%.

BNB is approximately $687, up around 0.2%.

XRP is around $1.34, down approximately 2%.

Solana is approximately $98.13, down around 3.7%.

TRON is around $0.324, down approximately 0.5%.

Hyperliquid is approximately $81.29, down around 2.5%.

Dogecoin is around $0.081, down approximately 0.7%.

Zcash is approximately $812, down around 4%.

Total Crypto Market Cap: approximately $2.59 trillion.

Fear & Greed: Greed.

Bitcoin isn’t doing much today, but the infrastructure around it certainly is.

Banks are building stablecoins. Stock exchanges are experimenting with tokenization. Bitcoin miners are turning themselves into AI infrastructure companies. Regulators are finally trying to modernize rules written in the 1970s. And crypto developers are preparing for security threats from technologies that aren’t fully mature yet.

That’s where I think the interesting story is.

Don’t only watch the Bitcoin price. Watch the rails being built underneath the entire financial and computing system, because that’s where a lot of the changes are happening before they become obvious to everybody else.

Happy HODLing

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine. In the long run, it is a weighing machine.” — Benjamin Graham

🎵 Song of the Day: “Ain’t No Sunshine” — Bill Withers — clean, spare, a little blue — the sound of a red day that doesn’t break you.

📡 THE NEWS

📊 Market Snapshot

(Live · Tuesday Evening · CoinGecko + CoinDesk + Yahoo)

🟧 BTC: $77,323 (-2.2% · slid under $77K intraday as oil surged) ⚠️
🔵 ETH: $2,440 (-1% · held up better than BTC)
🌐 XRP: $1.37 (-1%)
🟣 SOL: $102 (-1.4%)

The Driver: an oil surge (US-Iran tensions) overpowered fresh ETF inflows → risk-off across crypto, gold, silver
Fed Fears: Sept hike odds ticked to 66.4% (from ~40% pre-Warsh) — the headwind hardening
The Cushion: BTC ETFs still added $142M (inflows on a red day — the bid didn’t leave)
The Frame: first red day of September, but BTC held its August base ($77K support zone)

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 330 of 363–376 (bottom window Oct 4–17)

Support: $77,000 (testing) → $76,000 → $74,000 → $71,545 (200-day)
Resistance: $78,500 → $79,200 → $80,000 (the wall)

🧠 Satoshi Said It Better

Today: Proof-of-work

The whitepaper says: “The proof-of-work involves scanning for a value that when hashed… the hash begins with a number of zero bits.”

In fifth-grade English: To add a page to the notebook, you have to solve a puzzle that’s stupidly hard to crack but instantly easy for everyone else to check — like guessing a lock with trillions of combinations. Takes forever to find, one second to verify.

Why all that wasted effort? Because it makes cheating expensive. Faking the history would mean re-solving every puzzle since — burning more electricity than exists to spare — while the honest network sprints ahead. Lying literally costs more than it’s worth.

Banks stop fraud with a security guard. Satoshi stopped it with math and a power bill — no guard, no permission, no trust. The work is the wall. That “waste” everyone complains about? It’s the exact thing that makes your money impossible to counterfeit. 🟧

⚓ Three Bitcoin Stories That Defined Today

🛢️ OIL OVERPOWERED THE ETF BID — RISK-OFF WON THE DAY. Per Coinpaper: Bitcoin slid under $77,000 as a surge in oil prices overpowered fresh ETF inflows, with US-Iran tensions pushing crude higher and reviving inflation fear. Crypto, gold, and silver all fell together — a uniform risk-off, not a Bitcoin problem. This is the morning’s tug-of-war resolving against Bitcoin for a session: the debasement bid is real and persistent, but today the oil-and-Fed headwind was stronger. One day, one winner — and today it was the headwind. The base at $77K is the line that says whether this is a dip or something more.

💵 THE TELL UNDER THE RED: ETFs STILL BOUGHT $142M. Per NewsBTC: even as price fell, spot Bitcoin ETFs opened September with $142M in net inflows — the institutional bid didn’t flee the red candle, it added into it. That’s the quiet strength beneath a down day: short-term traders sold the oil scare, but the structural allocators kept stacking. When the price falls and the ETF money still shows up, the dip is being absorbed, not abandoned. It’s the same pattern that built the August base — buying the weakness, not chasing the strength.

⚖️ VOTING MACHINE TODAY, WEIGHING MACHINE LONG-TERM. Per CoinDesk: the day’s action is Graham’s distinction in real time — a “voting machine” swinging on oil headlines and Fed-hike bets, 66% odds now pricing a September move. But the weighing machine — the thing that matters over the cycle — is unchanged: 20,078,331 BTC mined of 21M max, Strategy back buying, ETFs adding on red days, the trend-flip stamped last night. Today the market voted “risk-off.” The weighing machine hasn’t changed its verdict. Don’t confuse a day’s vote for the long-run weight.

🍰 Powered By Cake Wallet

Your keys. Your coins. Your privacy. A red day driven by oil and Fed fears is a reminder that price answers to a thousand things you can’t control. Custody isn’t one of them — that’s yours to decide, green day or red. Cake Wallet is open-source, non-custodial, and built so the keys live with you — with native Monero support for the privacy-minded. Control the one variable that’s actually yours. Not financial advice. Just sound money, self-custodied. 🔑

🌅 THE TUESDAY THOUGHT — FINANCIAL (PM EDITION)

The Voting Machine Had A Loud Day

Bitcoin slid under $77K today because oil surged and the Fed looked scarier. That’s the market voting — reacting, in the moment, to the loudest headline in the room. And the voting machine had a loud, red day. The mistake is thinking today’s vote changed the weight of the thing you own.

Graham gave investors the most important distinction in finance: short-term, the market is a voting machine — a popularity contest driven by fear, headlines, and mood. Long-term, it’s a weighing machine — it eventually prices what a thing is actually worth. The two disagree constantly, and the disagreement is where fortunes are made and lost. The impatient trade the votes, whipsawed by every oil spike and Fed comment. The patient own the weight and let the votes wash past. Today’s vote was “risk-off.” The weight of a scarce, adopted, trend-flipped asset didn’t budge.

The discipline is knowing which machine you’re looking at. A red day is a vote. Your thesis is a weight. Don’t let a loud vote reprice a quiet truth.

🗳️ A red day is a vote, not a verdict — the machine’s just in a mood. ⚖️ Own the weight, not the votes — let the mood swings wash past. ⚓ Loud votes don’t reprice quiet truths.

Oil won the vote today. The weight is still yours. Hold it. ⚓

🎯 Your Move

One question: When a red day hits, do you react to the market’s vote — or hold to the weight of why you own the thing in the first place?

One challenge tonight: Next time a loud red day rattles you, name which machine is talking. Today was the voting machine, in a mood about oil. Write down the weight — the long-run reason you hold — so the next loud vote can’t con you into forgetting it.

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator

WATCH THIS!

It’s September 1st, 2026.

Bitcoin is still hanging around $77,000 to $78,000, but today’s biggest story isn’t really Bitcoin. It’s the bond market.

Government bond yields are rising around the world. That matters because Bitcoin isn’t trading in isolation. When investors can earn increasingly attractive returns from government debt, capital has another place to go. At the same time, higher yields tighten financial conditions and make the Fed’s fight against inflation considerably more important.

So while Bitcoin keeps trying to figure out whether $80,000 was the beginning of something bigger or just another bear-market rally, the macro environment is getting more difficult.

The Bond Market Is the Story Today

The U.S. Treasury yield has pushed toward 4.8%, its highest level in roughly a year.

But this isn’t only an American move.

Japan’s 10-year government bond yield has reached roughly 3%, Germany’s 10-year is around 3.36%, and the UK has moved toward 5.25%. Oil is also pushing toward $90 a barrel.

Why does any of this matter for Bitcoin?

Because higher government bond yields compete for capital.

If investors can earn close to 5% holding government debt, some money that might otherwise move into risk assets has a very attractive alternative.

Then add higher oil prices.

Higher energy costs can keep inflation elevated. Sticky inflation gives the Fed another reason to keep monetary policy tight.

That’s why the possibility of another Fed rate hike has gone from a fringe idea to something markets are seriously considering. The probability discussed in today’s show is now around 60% to 65%.

And Friday’s jobs report becomes considerably more important because of it.

The Job Market Isn’t Falling Apart

The August employment figures we’re watching are around 55,000 jobs added, with unemployment around 4.1%.

And I think we need some perspective here.

Four percent unemployment is low.

We can simultaneously acknowledge that people are struggling with prices, that some people are working multiple jobs, and that affordability remains a serious problem.

Those things can all be true.

But that’s different from saying the labor market has completely collapsed.

We’re not talking about 10% unemployment.

We’ve become accustomed to an unusually strong labor market, and I think that sometimes distorts how we interpret numbers that historically aren’t terrible.

The important question for Bitcoin is how the Fed interprets them.

Warsh has maintained that inflation still requires work, and higher energy prices make that argument harder to dismiss. If Friday’s employment report also shows enough strength to give the Fed room to raise rates, the bond market could remain a major headwind for Bitcoin.

ETF Buyers Came Back

There is some good news.

After approximately $200 million of spot Bitcoin ETF outflows on Friday, buyers returned Monday with around $216.7 million in inflows.

That’s important because ETF demand has been one of the strongest sources of support during Bitcoin’s recent move.

We’re still around $78,000, though.

So the levels haven’t changed much.

Bitcoin needs to defend approximately $75,000 to $77,000.

If ETF inflows remain positive and buyers continue stepping in around these levels, Bitcoin can make another attempt at $80K.

But I’m tired of simply touching $80K.

I want to see $82K.

I want Bitcoin to establish $80K as support.

On the other side, if we break below $75,000 and start moving toward $72,000, then we’re potentially establishing another downward trend.

And remember, I still don’t think we have confirmation that the bear market is finished.

Historically, the four-year cycle would put us around the normal bottoming period in October. We’re only at September 1st.

We’re still in play.

Maybe this ends up being a shallow bear market.

Maybe the bottom is already behind us.

But Bitcoin hasn’t proven that yet.

Strategy Buys Another $370 Million of Bitcoin

Michael Saylor doesn’t appear particularly concerned.

Strategy purchased another approximately 4,603 Bitcoin for $369.7 million between August 24 and August 30 after roughly a 10-week pause in purchases.

The average purchase price was around $80,000 per Bitcoin.

Strategy now holds approximately 845,050 Bitcoin, representing more than 4% of Bitcoin’s total supply.

They just don’t care.

Bitcoin goes up?

Buy.

Bitcoin goes down?

Buy.

Bitcoin trades sideways?

Buy.

They’re honey-badgering this thing.

Strive is doing it too, adding approximately $143 million worth of Bitcoin and becoming one of the largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin treasuries, according to the figures discussed today.

ARK Buys More Block

ARK Invest also added approximately $37 million of exposure to Jack Dorsey’s Block.

And I actually think this is an interesting way to think about the Bitcoin trade.

Bitcoin-adjacent companies can get punished hard during bear markets.

Payments companies, exchanges, miners and other businesses tied to crypto don’t necessarily command the same premium when Bitcoin sentiment is terrible.

But if you’re expecting another major Bitcoin bull market, those depressed valuations can create opportunities.

If Bitcoin eventually trades at $150,000 or $200,000, what does that environment potentially mean for a company like Block?

That’s the trade ARK appears to be looking toward.

You’re not simply buying Bitcoin.

You’re buying businesses whose economics and valuations could benefit from a much larger Bitcoin ecosystem.

I think Block at depressed valuations is a smart move for exactly that reason.

Cronos Halts After a $75 Million DeFi Exploit

On the security side, the Crypto.com-linked Cronos blockchain halted following an approximately $75 million DeFi exploit.

The important part isn’t simply another protocol losing money.

It’s what happens when a sufficiently integrated DeFi protocol has a problem large enough to become an ecosystem-level issue.

We’ve spent years talking about decentralization and removing centralized points of control.

Then something breaks and suddenly we’re discussing whether a blockchain needs to halt.

That’s why these exploits continue to matter beyond the dollar amount stolen.

George Santos Apparently Bet on George Santos

Now for one of the stranger stories today.

Former Congressman George Santos has reportedly received a lifetime ban from Kalshi after trading on a market concerning whether George Santos would attend the State of the Union.

Yes.

George Santos was apparently betting on George Santos.

According to the account discussed today, Santos then allegedly made a misleading public statement about whether he intended to attend, potentially influencing the outcome of a market involving an event he personally controlled.

He reportedly made approximately $17,800 on the trade and was assessed roughly $71,000 by Kalshi.

There are prediction markets.

Then there are prediction markets where the person being predicted is also trading the prediction.

Maybe don’t do that.

Robinhood Chain Nearly Hits $1 Billion in Daily DEX Volume

Robinhood Chain nearly reached $1 billion in decentralized exchange trading volume in a single day, while total value locked climbed to approximately $708 million and stablecoin supply reached roughly $778 million.

But here’s the part I love.

We’re apparently trading meme coins against tokenized stocks now.

A token called Artificial Inu, paired against Nvidia shares, reportedly went from approximately a $1.5 million market capitalization to a peak around $135 million on August 30.

That’s close to the kind of insanity we saw during earlier crypto cycles.

The trade where somebody throws money at some ridiculous token and somehow walks out with life-changing gains.

Obviously, most people aren’t the person walking out with the million dollars.

But seeing moves like that again tells you something about how much speculation is returning to certain corners of this market.

OpenSea Brings Back Solana NFTs

OpenSea is bringing Solana NFT trading back after initially testing Solana support several years ago.

Collections including Mad Lads, Claynosaurz and other Solana-native projects are being added as OpenSea attempts to establish itself as a broader multichain trading platform rather than primarily an Ethereum NFT marketplace.

Remember when NFTs were basically synonymous with Ethereum?

That world continues changing.

Platforms increasingly want liquidity from wherever traders actually are rather than forcing everything through a single chain.

Crypto Prices

Bitcoin is sitting around $77,821, down approximately 0.3% over 24 hours and 1.6% over seven days.

Ethereum is around $2,440, down approximately 0.5%.

BNB is approximately $685, essentially flat.

XRP is around $1.36, also essentially flat.

Solana is approximately $101, down around 1.2%.

TRON is around $0.326, down approximately 2.5%.

Hyperliquid is approximately $83.13, up around 2.3%.

Zcash continues moving higher at approximately $845.31, up another 2.5%.

Total Crypto Market Cap: approximately $2.63 trillion.

Fear & Greed Index: 74, Greed.

My Take

The bond market is what I’m watching.

Bitcoin ETF buyers came back Monday. Strategy is still buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. Corporate adoption isn’t disappearing.

But none of that changes the fact that Bitcoin is competing for capital in an environment where government bond yields are becoming increasingly attractive.

If inflation stays sticky, energy remains expensive, and Warsh believes getting back to 2% requires additional rate hikes, Bitcoin could be dealing with tighter liquidity exactly when bulls want another move through $80,000.

That’s why I’m still cautious.

Bitcoin has not confirmed that the bear market is over.

Defend $75K to $77K.

Get back through $80K.

Then show me $82K.

Until then, we’re still in play.

Happy HODLing

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” — Confucius

🎵 Song of the Day: “Unwritten” — Natasha Bedingfield — clean, hopeful, “the rest is still unwritten” — a month closes, the next page is blank.

📡 THE NEWS

📊 Market Snapshot

(Live · Monday Close · CoinGecko + CoinDesk + Investing.com)

🟧 BTC: $78,502 (+0.6% · closing August ~+24% — best month since Nov 2024) 🟢 🔵 ETH: $2,446 (-0.2% · ETH ETFs still on their inflow streak)
🌐 XRP: $1.37 (-0.7%)
🟣 SOL: $102 (SOL’s own strong month above $100)

The Milestone: August +24-25%, BTC’s best month since November 2024 · 2026 losses trimmed from −30% to ~−10%
The Stamp: monthly close far above the 50-month EMA ($65,631) — the trend-flip confirmation printed
🟢Strategy’s Back: ended a 10-week selling streak — bought 4,603 BTC ($370M) · Saylor: “We’re Back”
The Headwind: Sept hike odds jumped to 64% (from 40% pre-Warsh) · 10-year yield at a 3-year high · fresh US-Iran strikes

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 329 of 363–376 (bottom window Oct 4–17)

Support: $77,024 (today’s low) → $76,000 → $74,000 → $71,545 (200-day) Resistance: $79,400 (today’s rejection) → $80,000 (the wall) → $81,479

🧠 Satoshi Said It Better

Today: The double-spend problem

The whitepaper says: “…the problem of course is the payee can’t verify that one of the owners did not double-spend the coin.”

In fifth-grade English: Digital stuff is copyable. You can send the same photo to a thousand people and still keep it. Great for cat pictures, catastrophic for money — because if “digital cash” can be copied, I can spend the same dollar in ten places at once, and it’s worth nothing.

For decades, the only fix anyone had was a middleman keeping a master list: “nope, Paul already spent that one.” Back to the bank. Back to asking permission.

Satoshi’s breakthrough was making everyone share one public list nobody can secretly edit — so the whole network sees the coin move and agrees it can’t move twice. No referee needed. The crowd itself became the referee.

That’s the trick that made digital money possible for the first time ever: solve the copy problem without a middleman, and suddenly you don’t need the bank at all. 🟧

⚓ Three Bitcoin Stories That Defined Today

📅 AUGUST CLOSES +24% — BEST MONTH SINCE NOVEMBER 2024. Per news.Bitcoin.com: despite a late-day dip on Iran headlines, Bitcoin ends August with ~24-25% gains — one of its best months of the cycle — trimming 2026 losses from nearly 30% to just over 10%. More important for the long read: it’s closing far above the 50-month EMA ($65,631), stamping the monthly trend-flip the Cycle Clock has tracked since Day 300. The single heaviest candle on the chart just printed green. A month that started at $63K and ends near $79K, above the line that matters, is the strongest evidence yet that June was the bottom. The stamp is in.

🐋 STRATEGY IS BACK — 10-WEEK SELLING STREAK OVER. Per Investing.com: Michael Saylor’s Strategy ended an unprecedented ten-week selling streak, buying 4,603 BTC for $370M between Aug 24-30 — and Saylor posted “We’re Back.” The firm’s 840,447-BTC stack now sits ~$2.8B above cost basis, its July paper losses fully erased. This matters beyond one company: the bellwether corporate buyer flipping from seller to buyer is a structural signal— the same pattern (whales seller→buyer) that marked the August breakout, now confirmed by the largest treasury of all. Strive also grew to the fifth-largest public BTC treasury. The accumulators are accumulating again.

⚠️ THE FED ODDS TURNED HOSTILE — 64% HIKE. Per CoinDesk: the honest headwind sharpened today — September hike odds jumped to 64% (from 40% before Warsh), the 30-year yield hit 5.26% and the 10-year a 3-year high, and fresh US-Iran airstrikes pushed oil up 3%. Rising rates and a strong dollar are a real weight on every scarce asset. The trend flipped bullish on the monthly chart — but the macro just got harder, not easier. This is the tension into September: a confirmed trend-flip meeting a hawkish Fed. The rally’s foundation is set; the next leg has to climb a steeper hill.

🩸 Powered By SuperPower

Test, don’t guess. Know your baseline. Week 5 is Strategic Supplementation, and month-end is the perfect time for the lesson: you can’t improve what you don’t measure. SuperPower analyzes 100+ biomarkers from a single blood draw, turning a guess into a baseline you can actually track month over month. Bitcoin just closed its monthly candle — a clean, measurable checkpoint. Give your body the same. Supplement the gaps the data reveals, not the ones the ads invent. Test, don’t guess. Not medical advice. Just the data your body was already keeping. 🩸

Use this link for $50 off.

🌅 THE MONDAY THOUGHT — HEALTH · WEEK 5: STRATEGIC SUPPLEMENTATION (PM EDITION)

Close The Month, Read The Data

Bitcoin just closed its monthly candle — a clean, measurable checkpoint. +24%, above the line, best month in nearly two years. And whatever comes next, that close is now a fixed data point you can measure the future against. Which is exactly what strategic supplementation — and strategic anything — actually requires: regular checkpoints where you stop, measure, and adjust.

The whole reason “supplement blindly” fails is that it skips the checkpoint. You add pills with no baseline, so you never know if they worked, never adjust, never learn. The strategic version runs on cadence: measure, add the missing input, then come back at the next checkpoint and read the data again. Did the vitamin D move the number? Did the change hold? Without the recurring close-the-month moment, you’re not optimizing — you’re just guessing, forever, with no feedback.

Your body deserves the same monthly candle the market just printed. Pick a cadence. Measure. Adjust. Then measure again. Progress you don’t checkpoint is progress you can’t steer.

📅 Set a checkpoint cadence — measure on a schedule, not a whim. 🩸 Read the data, then adjust — that’s the whole optimization loop. ⚓ You can’t steer what you don’t measure.

The month closed with a clean number. Give your health the same checkpoint — then read it. ⚓

🎯 Your Move

One question: When did you last take a real checkpoint on your health — an actual measurement — instead of just vaguely hoping the habits are working?

One challenge tonight: It’s month-end. Close your own candle: pick one health metric that matters to you and measure it— write the number down. That number is your baseline. Next month-end, measure again. Steering requires data, not hope. ⚓

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator ⚓

WATCH THIS!

After such a dramatic rally, the obvious risk was a violent snapback. Instead, Bitcoin spent the week consolidating and finished almost exactly where it started.

For Craig, that’s evidence that Bitcoin remains surprisingly strong.

The problem is that strong doesn’t necessarily mean tradable.

Start your free 7-day trial of Market Intern at:

https://marketintern.com

Subscribe to Craig’s free Tuesday newsletter at:

https://www.thegrowmeco.com

Bitcoin Didn’t Snap Back

After a major move higher, Craig normally expects some elasticity in the market.

Think of it like stretching a rubber band.

The further you pull it, the greater the possibility that it snaps back when buyers finally let go.

But that hasn’t happened.

Bitcoin spent an entire week grinding sideways and ultimately closed approximately 0.09% higher.

Essentially flat.

There was selling after Fed Chair Warsh’s Jackson Hole comments about sticky inflation, but even that wasn’t enough to create a significant breakdown.

The resulting weekly candle rejected the highs, closed near where it opened, and failed to extend the previous week’s rally.

Some technical traders might give that candle a specific name.

Craig doesn’t care.

What matters is what the candle actually tells him.

Price tried to move higher.

It failed.

But sellers also failed to push Bitcoin meaningfully lower.

In the context of the massive rally that preceded it, that’s not necessarily bearish.

Bitcoin Still Looks Surprisingly Strong

Craig believes Bitcoin could still push toward new highs within its current trajectory.

But there’s an important distinction between having a bullish higher-time-frame outlook and having a market worth trading.

Right now, Bitcoin is messy.

Craig isn’t seeing the clean trend structure or cyclicity he wants.

When markets establish clear trends with consistent pullbacks and continuation moves, he can repeatedly trade those structures.

When price chops sideways without a clear rhythm, there’s considerably less to work with.

Bitcoin currently falls into the second category.

The Four-Hour Chart Isn’t Giving Craig Enough

Craig uses the four-hour chart as an important middle ground.

It sits between the shorter trading time frames and the daily chart.

When the four-hour chart shows good trend structure and cyclicity, it often opens opportunities on both the four-hour and lower time frames.

Bitcoin isn’t providing that clarity right now.

Ethereum and much of the rest of the largest cryptocurrencies look similar.

That doesn’t mean opportunities won’t develop quickly.

Crypto proved that only two weeks ago.

But Craig isn’t interested in forcing trades while waiting for the market to become clearer.

Pump.fun Shows the Structure Craig Wants

Craig uses Pump.fun as an example of the type of market structure he wants to find.

The important part isn’t simply that price went higher.

It’s how it went higher.

Strong move.

Pullback.

Continuation.

Another pullback.

Another continuation.

That’s cyclicity.

It creates a recognizable rhythm that allows a trend follower to identify potential entries while managing risk around a repeatable structure.

Craig notes that a member of his community, Manny, caught the earlier Pump.fun opportunity.

Now he’s searching for similar structures elsewhere in the market.

Zora Has the Right Ingredients

Zora is one of the charts catching Craig’s attention.

It established a higher low followed by a higher high and then produced a clean pullback toward Craig’s moving-average cradle zone.

There’s also good convergence around the setup.

The problem is that price may have already moved too far for the particular opportunity Craig was watching.

That’s an important distinction.

A chart can look bullish without necessarily offering a good trade right now.

Craig isn’t recommending Zora.

He’s using it to demonstrate the structure he wants:

Good trend. Good cyclicity. Good momentum.

CHIP Shows the Same Trend-Following Structure

Craig also highlights CHIP on the 12-hour chart.

Again, he’s looking for structure rather than simply a coin that’s moving higher.

CHIP produced a higher low, tested the previous high, formed another higher low, pushed cleanly through resistance and then pulled back toward the moving averages.

That’s the rhythm Craig has built his trading approach around.

He’s not saying it’s automatically a trade.

He’s demonstrating the checklist.

Trend.

Cyclicity.

Momentum.

Moving-average structure.

Then patience.

ZRO Is Holding an Important Psychological Level

The final chart Craig highlights is ZRO on the daily time frame.

ZRO formed a higher low and higher high before becoming messy.

Now that volatility has calmed down, Craig is watching the developing bullish candle and the fact that price is holding just above $1.

That’s important because $1 represents an obvious psychological level.

Again, it isn’t a recommendation.

It’s another example of a chart displaying more of the characteristics Craig wants than Bitcoin currently does.

Liquidity Still Matters

Craig would prefer to trade major cryptocurrencies because that’s generally where the deepest liquidity exists.

But time frame matters.

Zora had roughly $33 million in trading volume during the period discussed, while ZRO had around $6.6 million.

Lower liquidity becomes less problematic when Craig is looking at a daily setup because the wider stop generally means a smaller position size while maintaining the same amount of risk.

It’s another example of why Craig doesn’t evaluate a setup using a single variable.

Trend structure, cyclicity, momentum, liquidity, time frame and risk all interact.

My Take

Bitcoin’s consolidation is encouraging because the huge rally wasn’t immediately erased.

But Craig isn’t going to manufacture a Bitcoin trade simply because Bitcoin looks strong.

He’s a trend follower.

Right now, the cleaner trends are appearing elsewhere.

That’s why he’s watching charts such as Zora, CHIP and ZRO while Bitcoin sorts itself out.

Last week was considerably slower than the opportunity-filled week before it.

That can change quickly.

For now, Craig is staying patient, looking for good trends with good cyclicity, and waiting for Bitcoin’s next leg.

Start your free 7-day trial of Market Intern at:

https://marketintern.com

Subscribe to Craig’s free Tuesday newsletter at:

https://www.thegrowmeco.com

Happy Hodling, Everyone.

It’s Monday, August 31st, 2026.

Before we get into Bitcoin, I want to talk about something broader because I think it applies to crypto, investing, politics, business, parenting, physical fitness, and just about everything else.

Hold yourself to high standards.

The reason that matters here is that crypto is an industry built around competing narratives. If all you listen to are Bitcoin bulls telling you the dollar is about to collapse and everything is going onto a Bitcoin standard, eventually you’re going to believe some version of that. If all you listen to are bears telling you Bitcoin is a government conspiracy designed to destroy the financial system, eventually you’re going to believe some version of that instead.

Neither is a particularly good way to make decisions.

You have to understand the bull case and the bear case. You have to understand the technology, but you also have to understand how it can fail. You have to challenge your own assumptions instead of searching for people who reinforce them. And you have to be willing to change your mind when the information changes.

That’s the standard I try to apply here. It’s also why you’re listening to Daily Crypto News. This industry has already changed the world, and most people still don’t completely understand what is happening.

Bitcoin Failed at $80K Again

Bitcoin is back below $78,000 after another failed attempt to establish $80,000 as support.

We’ve talked about this level repeatedly.

Touching $80K isn’t enough anymore.

Bitcoin needs to get through $80K, begin closing closer to $83K, and then use $80K as the floor when sellers come back.

That hasn’t happened.

Instead, we’ve got several new headwinds. Renewed U.S.-Iran fighting has pushed oil higher. Bond yields are rising. The market is pricing in tighter monetary policy. And the winning streak for spot Bitcoin ETF flows finally ended.

Friday saw approximately $200 million in net outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, ending the recent run of consecutive inflow days.

That’s not catastrophic. ETF flows move in both directions.

But after ETF demand helped support Bitcoin during its run toward $80K, it’s something worth watching.

Right now, the first job is defending roughly $78K. Then we need another attack on $80K.

Warsh Looks More Serious About 2% Inflation

The bigger macro issue is Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.

The market interpreted his Jackson Hole comments as hawkish enough that the probability of a September rate increase moved to roughly 60% from around 40% a week earlier, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.

What caught my attention was Warsh’s emphasis on 2% inflation.

Jerome Powell became more flexible about how the Fed approached that target. Warsh sounds, at least from my interpretation of his comments, considerably more committed to actually getting inflation back to 2%.

If that’s his standard, then the consequences are straightforward.

Tighter monetary policy.

Potentially higher rates.

Less liquidity.

That’s not necessarily the environment Bitcoin wants.

My expectation is that we’re going to get additional rate increases. I think two more hikes by the end of the year are possible because inflation remains too high for the standard Warsh appears to be setting.

We’ll see.

But if I’m right about his philosophy, Bitcoin investors need to take it seriously rather than assuming the Fed is inevitably coming to rescue risk assets with cheaper money.

Bitcoin Miners Are Becoming AI Infrastructure Companies

Now we get to what I think is one of the biggest structural stories happening inside the Bitcoin mining industry.

Bitcoin miners spent years acquiring something AI companies desperately need:

Power.

But that’s only the beginning.

They have grid connections.

Land.

Substations.

Cooling systems.

Fiber.

Data-center facilities.

And in some cases, access to the computing infrastructure needed to expand into high-performance computing and AI.

That puts established Bitcoin miners in an unusually good position.

Instead of starting from scratch and waiting years to build data centers and negotiate grid access, some miners can take infrastructure they already control and redirect portions of it toward AI.

And the economics are starting to show why they’re doing it.

IREN’s AI cloud revenue reached approximately $70.5 million in the latest quarter, increasing roughly 110% and surpassing its Bitcoin mining revenue, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.

The company also says approximately $4 billion in annualized AI cloud revenue has already been contracted for planned capacity.

That’s not a side business anymore.

AI Regulation Could Become Bitcoin Mining Regulation

Here’s the part I think deserves considerably more attention.

The AI data-center boom is creating an infrastructure policy problem.

These facilities require enormous amounts of electricity.

So do Bitcoin mines.

Grid operators, utilities and governments increasingly have to decide who gets connected, where new transmission gets built, how much electricity these facilities can consume, how water gets allocated, and what permits are required.

That means Bitcoin mining economics can increasingly be affected by rules ostensibly written for the AI boom.

Think about that.

Bitcoin mining used to operate largely in the background. AI data centers now have enormous political and regulatory attention.

But when the same companies, power infrastructure and data centers are serving both industries, separating them becomes difficult.

AI infrastructure policy can indirectly become Bitcoin infrastructure policy.

That’s not necessarily good or bad.

It’s simply something Bitcoin investors need to understand.

Riot Is Increasingly an AI Company With Bitcoin Attached

Look at what is happening with Riot Platforms.

According to the Bernstein analysis discussed in today’s show, approximately 84% of Riot’s target enterprise value now comes from AI, compared with roughly 11% from Bitcoin mining and another 5% associated with its Bitcoin holdings.

That follows Riot’s reported $9.1 billion in data-center agreements with frontier AI labs.

Think about how dramatic that is.

We’re talking about a company historically identified as a Bitcoin miner being valued predominantly around AI infrastructure.

CleanSpark and MARA are also beginning to separate based on their ability to execute on AI.

CleanSpark has reportedly secured approximately $6.6 billion in AI leases, while MARA has yet to announce a comparable commercial AI agreement. Bernstein consequently maintained a more favorable rating on CleanSpark than MARA in the analysis discussed today.

Bitcoin mining isn’t disappearing.

But investors are beginning to ask whether the electricity and infrastructure controlled by these companies might be worth more serving AI customers than mining Bitcoin.

Power Is the Constraint

One company has taken that argument even further.

The company discussed in today’s show has decommissioned its U.S. Bitcoin mining operations as it converts those locations toward AI and high-performance computing. It also sold 1,085 Bitcoin for approximately $75 million, while retaining 1,861 Bitcoin on its balance sheet.

The CEO’s thesis was basically:

Power is the constraint. Everything else comes after it.

That’s a useful way to think about the entire AI infrastructure boom.

Everybody talks about chips.

But a chip sitting inside a box without enough electricity isn’t doing anything.

You need generation.

Transmission.

Grid connections.

Cooling.

Storage.

Land.

Fiber.

Data centers.

That’s the vertical.

The AI Infrastructure Trade Is Getting Much Bigger

We talked about this last week with SanDisk.

A year ago, most people thought of SanDisk as the company making flash drives, memory cards and storage.

Then AI infrastructure demand changed how investors looked at the business.

The same thing is now happening across industries that don’t immediately scream “AI.”

SLB announced an approximately $3.4 billion cash acquisition of cooling-equipment manufacturer Kelvion, while assuming roughly another $700 million in debt, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.

Why does an oil-services giant care about cooling equipment?

Data centers.

This is exactly why I keep talking about understanding the vertical.

AI isn’t Nvidia.

It’s Nvidia plus memory plus storage plus cooling plus electricity plus transmission plus data centers plus land plus fiber plus everything else required to make the system operate.

And Bitcoin miners happen to own several important pieces of that stack already.

But What Happens if the AI Trade Breaks?

This is where I want to apply the standard I talked about at the beginning.

Don’t just listen to the bull case.

There are yellow flags.

If every company suddenly becomes an “AI infrastructure company” because investors will pay a premium for anything associated with AI, we need to start asking how much of these valuations depend on AI demand continuing at its current pace.

Bitcoin miners actually have an interesting hedge.

If AI demand collapses tomorrow, they still have infrastructure that can theoretically return to Bitcoin mining.

Whether that makes every individual miner a profitable business is a different question, but the infrastructure itself still has another use.

Some companies being built almost entirely around the AI boom may not have that luxury.

And the concentration of stock-market value around AI raises a much larger economic question.

If we’re building an enormous amount of retirement wealth and market capitalization around the assumption that this spending continues, a severe AI correction doesn’t remain isolated to technology investors.

It hits index funds.

It hits 401(k)s.

It hits retirement accounts.

It hits household wealth.

I’m not saying that’s going to happen.

I’m saying there are enough yellow flags that we should be paying attention instead of pretending there’s only one possible outcome.

The doom-and-gloom stuff gets clicks.

So does the “AI changes everything and number goes up forever” stuff.

I don’t want either bubble.

I want the information from both sides.

Crypto Prices

Bitcoin is sitting at approximately $77,900, down around 1% over the past 24 hours.

Ethereum is around $2,474, down roughly 0.8%.

BNB is trading around $686, down approximately 1.6%.

XRP is around $1.36, down roughly 2.3%.

Solana is approximately $102, down around 3.3%.

TRON is trading around $0.334, down roughly 2%.

Hyperliquid is approximately $81.23, down nearly 3%.

And Zcash has suddenly moved into the top ten at approximately $823, despite being down around 2.5% on the day.

Dogecoin has fallen to number 11 at roughly $0.082, down around 3.3%.

Total Crypto Market Cap: approximately $2.62 trillion.

Fear & Greed Index: 74, Greed.

My Take

Bitcoin failing at $80K again isn’t the most interesting story to me today.

The bigger story is that Bitcoin infrastructure and AI infrastructure are becoming intertwined.

Bitcoin miners spent years accumulating something that suddenly became incredibly valuable to another industry: access to enormous amounts of electricity and the infrastructure required to use it.

That’s creating opportunities for companies like IREN, Riot and CleanSpark.

It’s also creating new risks.

The regulations written because politicians and utilities are worried about AI data centers could affect Bitcoin mining. The valuations being attached to miners could increasingly depend on their AI businesses rather than their Bitcoin businesses. And if the AI boom eventually turns into an AI bust, we’re going to find out very quickly which companies built sustainable infrastructure and which ones simply attached “AI” to their investor presentation.

That’s why I started today’s show talking about standards.

Don’t become an AI bull because everybody else is bullish.

Don’t become a Bitcoin bear because Bitcoin failed at $80K.

Take in the information.

Understand the bull case.

Understand the bear case.

Then make your own decision.

Happy HODLing

⏱️ The Clock

Last bottom: Nov 21, 2022 · Last top: Oct 6, 2025 at ~$126,198
Bottom → Top: 1,050 days · Top → today: Day 328
Historical top → bottom: 363 days (2018) · 376 days (2022)
Projected window: Oct 4 – Oct 17, 2026 (35–48 days out)

⚠️ Sample size: two. A pattern, not a law — and price already ran hard ahead of the calendar, which is the “bottom came early” scenario in real time.

📊 The Seven Signals

Score: five green, two amber, zero red. The macro row slipped back to amber this week on Warsh — the one genuine headwind against an otherwise strengthening board.

🔬 The Deeper Gauges

💸 SOPR (profit or loss on coins moving?) — now holding above 1.0. Last week it hovered at the line; the rally pushed it above, meaning sellers are back in profit and confident. One of the three confirmation flags just flipped green. ✅

🔨 Puell Multiple — recovered off the “miners starving” lows as price ran. Miners back in profit = less forced selling. ✅

⏳ Bitcoin Days Destroyed — still quiet; Galaxy notes dormant-coin activity at its lowest since 2022, and 2026 on pace for under half of last year’s total. The ancient hands are not selling into strength. ✅

📊 VanEck ChainCheck — the Sept–Nov accumulation-transition window still stands, dovetailing with our Oct read.

⚖️ The Big Question: Confirming, Not Yet Confirmed

🐂 Bottom-in case (strengthened this week). Three confirmation flags I set out weeks ago:

1. ✅ SOPR holding above 1.0 — flipped green this week

2. ⏳ Aug 31 monthly close above the 50-month EMA — prints tomorrow, and at $78K it’s far above $65,631 — looks locked

3. ✅ $71,500 (200-day) holding as support — price is well above it

Two of three already flying, the third stamps tomorrow. Add the 25%+ run off June’s $58K, the ETF flood, and BDD at multi-year lows, and bulls like Haseeb Qureshi now openly call June the cycle bottom.

🐻 The case not to dismiss. Bitcoin tested $80–81K four times this week and couldn’t break it — the year’s thickest supply wall still caps the tape. Warsh went hawkish (Sept hike odds ~57%). And a named voice, Token Bay Capital’s Lucy Gazmararian, expects “one final flush, another ~20% drop to keep in line with prior cycles.” The deepest long-term holders never capitulated — with price up, they’re more in profit, not less. The flush door isn’t closed.

🎯 What Would Change The Read — the Ladder

🟢 Confirms the bottom: the Aug 31 monthly close stamps above the 50-month · SOPR stays above 1.0 · ETF inflows extend past 8 days · a daily close finally clears $80–82K.

🔴 Warns of the flush:

• Loses $77,250 (50-week EMA) on a daily close → caution

• Falls to $74–75K → still a normal pullback

• Sinks to $71,500 (200-day) → the line that must hold

• Cracks $62–64K → the “one final flush” the bears want · sub-$58K = bear still alive

The Bottom Line

The board is the strongest it’s read all cycle — five green signals, SOPR above 1.0, whales dormant, ETFs flooding, and the trend-flip stamp printing tomorrow. Two of three confirmation flags are already flying; the third is a day out and looks locked.But honesty keeps the amber lit: $80K is still a wall, not a floor, Warsh handed the rally a real headwind, and respected voices still expect one final flush to match the old cycles. So the read is confirming, not confirmed. Watch tomorrow’s monthly close — a green August candle above the 50-month EMA is the strongest single piece of evidence yet that June was the bottom. Then watch whether $80K finally falls, or whether the bears get their flush. We’re closer to the answer than we’ve been all cycle — and one day from a real stamp.

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator ⚓

💬 Quote of the Week: “We have work to do.” — Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, Jackson Hole, dismissing the soft inflation prints and gut-checking the rally

🎵 Song of the Week: “Tubthumping” — Chumbawamba — “I get knocked down, but I get up again” — clean, relentless, and exactly the week’s shape.

📊 Week In One Snapshot

🟧 BTC: $78,504 Mon → peak $81,479 (Fri overnight) → Warsh → $77,678 Sat (+0.7% week — barely green after a double-digit run)
🔵 ETH: $2,450 → $2,430 (round-tripped with BTC)
🌐 XRP: $1.52 → $1.38 (gave back part of its big run)
🟣 SOL: $95 → $102 (the week’s relative winner, +~12%, held $100)

The Verdict: Warsh went hawkish — 2% target “unwavering and non-negotiable,” Sept hike odds jumped to ~57%
The Wall: BTC tested $80–81K repeatedly and couldn’t hold it — the year’s thickest supply cluster
The Cushion: 8 straight days of ETF inflows (~$2.8B) · August the strongest inflow month of 2026 (ETF AUM near $100B)

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 327 of 363–376 (full analysis tomorrow in The Cycle Clock)

📡 PART ONE — THE WEEK THAT WAS

⚓ The 5-Day Arc

🟢 Mon — Steady. BTC held $78.5K while frothy alts got shaken (XRP −11%, ADA −10% Sunday). The base stayed firm as the edges wobbled — leverage cooling, breakout intact.

🧱 Tue — Rejected. BTC lunged past $81,023, got slapped back under $80K to ~$79K. The overbought fade the desks warned about — $6.4B of shorts already covered, futures in backwardation. Digestion, not failure.

📈 Wed — Bull Score 80. CryptoQuant’s conviction gauge hit its highest since October 2025 (8 of 10 bullish) — then a hot PCE (3.7%) knocked BTC from $81K to $78K. The meter said strong; the mood said nervous.

🔁 Thu — Eight Straight. ETFs logged their 8th consecutive inflow day (longest since April), BTC absorbed the hot print and reclaimed $80,526 — while Jackson Hole opened themed “Financial Innovation,” crypto at the Fed’s head table for the first time in 40 years.

🎙️ Fri — The Verdict. Warsh went hawkish — “we have work to do,” no trend change in inflation. BTC hit $81,479overnight, then fell through $78K. Gold −2.4%, risk sold off across the board. The double-digit week shrank to +0.7%.

🧠 The Quiet Signal

This was a week of testing — the market threw everything at the rally and measured what held. It tested the $80–81K supply wall four separate times and couldn’t break it. It tested conviction with a hot PCE print, and buyers stepped back in. It tested the whole thesis with a hawkish Fed chair on Friday, and Bitcoin gave back most of a double-digit week in an afternoon. And here’s what survived every test: the week still closed green, the 8-day ETF streak held, August finished as 2026’s strongest inflow month, and BTC stayed well above every key support. The rally didn’t get confirmed this week — $80K remains a wall, not a floor, and Warsh put a real headwind in front of it. But it didn’t get broken either. A rally that runs to $81K, eats a hawkish Fed, round-trips its gains, and still closes green is not the fragile summer tape — it’s a market that took the establishment’s hardest shot and stayed standing. What it hasn’t earned yet is the breakout. What it proved is the base.

🌅 PART TWO — THE WEEK AHEAD

📅 What’s Coming

📊 MONDAY, AUG 31 — THE MONTHLY CLOSE. The big one: even after the Warsh give-back, BTC at ~$78K sits far above the 50-month EMA ($65,631). A green August monthly close stamps the trend flip the Cycle Clock has tracked all cycle — give-back or not.
🏛️ SEPT 16 — FOMC. Hike odds jumped to ~57% after Warsh. The rally runs on liquidity, not easing — this is the risk.
🎙️ THE DEBASEMENT TRADE — BTC’s rising correlation with gold (Grayscale flagged it) is the higher-quality demand to watch hold.
📊 Watch: does $77,250 (50-week EMA) hold as support, and can ETF inflows extend past 8 days?

📊 The Levels

🟢 Support: $77,250 (50-week EMA — critical) → $76,000 → $74,000 → $71,545 (200-day)
🔴 Resistance: $78,000 (reclaim) → $80,000 → $81,479 (the wall/week high) → $83,000

⚓ The Bottom Line

The market spent the week testing the rally and the rally mostly passed — it ran to $81K, took a hawkish Fed chair’s hardest shot, round-tripped its gains, and still closed green with its base intact and August the strongest ETF month of 2026. What it didn’t do is break $80K, which stays a wall until a close clears it. Monday’s month-end candle is the near-term prize: a green August close above the 50-month EMA stamps the trend flip regardless of Friday’s give-back. Knocked down, got back up. Rest the body, rest the mind — tomorrow the Cycle Clock reads Day 328 and weighs whether the bottom’s behind us; Monday we go back to work. ⚓

🌱 Powered By Huel

Complete nutrition. Zero decisions. A week that ran up, got knocked back, and still finished green is a lesson in showing up regardless — and your health runs on the same rule. Huel is complete food in one step: protein, carbs, fats, 26 vitamins and minerals, no thinking required. It removes the food decision the way automated DCA removes the trade decision — decide once, then keep showing up through the round trips. Consistency compounds. New to Huel? Use referral code REF-PAULM4588 at checkout. Not medical advice. Just complete fuel for a body built to carry the stack. 🌱

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator ⚓

WATCH THIS!

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill

🎵 Song of the Day: “Titanium” — David Guetta ft. Sia — clean, defiant, “you shoot me down, but I won’t fall” — the sound of taking the hit and staying up.

📡 THE NEWS

📊 Market Snapshot

(Live · Friday Evening · The Defiant + CoinDesk + Bloomberg)

🟧 BTC: $77,955 (overnight high $81,479 → Warsh → sub-$78K · −3% day, +0.7% week) ⚠️
🔵 ETH: $2,430 (gave back with the tape)
🌐 XRP: $1.38 (pulled in from its weekly highs)
🟣 SOL: $102 (held $100+ despite the selloff)

The Verdict: Warsh’s “In Our Time” keynote — 2% target “unwavering and non-negotiable,” no proof inflation has eased
The Reaction: risk sold off across the board — gold −2.4%, yields up front-end, Sept hike odds ~57%
The Round Trip: BTC’s double-digit weekly gain shrank to +0.7% — it gave most of it back in a day
Still Standing: 8-day ETF streak (~$2.8B) · August the strongest inflow month of 2026 · week still closed green

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 326 of 363–376 (bottom window Oct 4–17)

Support: $77,250 (50-week EMA — critical) → $76,000 → $74,000 → $71,545 (200-day)
Resistance: $78,000 (reclaim) → $80,000 → $81,479 (today’s high)

🧠 Satoshi Said It Better

Today: The conclusion — why it’s yours

The whitepaper says: “We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.”

In fifth-grade English: That’s the whole thing, in Satoshi’s own closing words. Not “a better bank.” Not “faster payments.” A system for moving money where you don’t have to trust anyone — no middleman, no permission, no gatekeeper who can freeze it, reverse it, or tell you no.

Nine pages walked from the problem (middlemen control your money) to the fix (a public notebook, guarded by math and honest self-interest, that lives everywhere and answers to no one). And it ends where it began: with you, holding your own money, needing nobody’s permission to keep it or move it.

That’s the reason Bitcoin exists. Not to survive a Fed speech — that’s just this week’s weather. To be money you actually own. The price gave back its week today; the reason gave back nothing. 🟧

(That’s the whole whitepaper, decoded — again. Monday we start at the top. The reason outlasts every verdict.)

⚓ Three Bitcoin Stories That Defined Today

🔄 THE WEEK ROUND-TRIPPED — A DOUBLE-DIGIT GAIN SHRANK TO +0.7%. Per The Defiant: after tagging $81,479 overnight, Bitcoin fell through $78,000 as Warsh’s hawkish keynote convinced traders the Fed is readier to hike than cut — giving back almost the entire weekly gain. This is the honest correction to this morning’s read: the base held the first dip during the speech, but the second wave of selling took it lower as yields climbed. The rally didn’t break — it’s still green on the week and above its key supports — but it surrendered most of its spoils in a single afternoon. That round trip is the lesson: gains you don’t lock in can vanish on one speech.

🌍 THE SELLOFF WAS EVERYWHERE — NOT A BITCOIN PROBLEM. Per CoinDesk: Warsh’s message hit allrisk assets — gold dropped 2.4%, the S&P and Nasdaq gave up gains, front-end yields rose, the dollar firmed.Bitcoin fell with the pack, not ahead of it. That’s actually the reassuring part: this wasn’t crypto-specific weakness or a broken thesis — it was a uniform, macro-driven risk-off on a hawkish Fed, exactly the “this is a macro story, not a crypto one” read we’ve flagged all week. When everything sells together, it’s the Fed talking, not Bitcoin failing. The debasement trade that drove the rally is intact; it just met a hawkish headwind.

🛡️ THE STRUCTURE HELD WHERE IT COUNTS — ETFs, THE MONTH, THE WEEK. Per CoinDesk & CaptainAltcoin: even through the selloff, the 8-day ETF inflow streak (~$2.8B) stands, August is the strongest inflow month of 2026 (ETF AUM near $100B), and the week still closed green. Bulls like Haseeb Qureshi argue the June low near $58K was the cycle bottom and the debasement trade has room to run. The verdict was hawkish and the price gave back its gains — but the structural foundation the rally was built on didn’t crack. Monday’s month-end close above the 50-month EMA is now the thing to watch: give-back or not, a green August monthly candle still stamps the trend flip.

🍰 Powered By Cake Wallet

Your keys. Your coins. Your privacy. Bitcoin gave back a week’s gains on one man’s speech today — a reminder that price bends to headlines, but ownership doesn’t. A hawkish Fed can move the number; it can’t touch the coins in your own custody. Cake Wallet is open-source, non-custodial, and built so the keys live with you — with native Monero support for the privacy-minded. Not financial advice. Just sound money, self-custodied. 🔑

🌅 THE FRIDAY THOUGHT — CAREER & EDUCATION (PM EDITION)

What You Keep Is What You Learn

Bitcoin spent all week climbing double digits — and handed most of it back in a single afternoon on one speech. A round trip. And there’s a hard Career truth in that: gains you don’t consolidate can vanish as fast as they came. What you actually keep isn’t the peak — it’s what you locked in.

This is the difference between a good year and a good career. Anyone can have a hot streak — a big win, a viral moment, a lucky run. But if you don’t convert those spikes into something permanent — a skill banked, a relationship deepened, a reputation built, savings set aside — the streak round-trips, and you’re back where you started with nothing but a story about how high it briefly got. The people who compound over a career are the ones who consolidate: they turn each peak into a new, higher floor instead of letting it evaporate.

Today’s tape gave back its gains. But the lessons of this week — the discipline, the levels learned, the base that held — those don’t round-trip if you banked them. Peaks are temporary. What you consolidate is permanent.

🔒 Consolidate the gain — an unlocked peak round-trips. 📈 Turn each high into a new floor — that’s how careers compound. ⚓ What you keep is what you learn, not what you touched.

The price gave it back. Bank the lesson — that part’s yours to keep. ⚓

🎯 Your Move

One question: What recent “peak” — a win, a hot streak, a high moment — did you let round-trip because you never consolidated it into something permanent?

One challenge this weekend: Take one gain from a good stretch and lock it in — bank the skill, write down the lesson, deepen the relationship, set aside the money. Turn the peak into a new floor before it evaporates. What you consolidate is what you keep. ⚓

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator ⚓

WATCH THIS!

It’s Friday, August 28th, 2026.

Bitcoin is still fighting with $80,000.

Paul McNeal told me yesterday, “Patience, grasshopper.”

Okay, Paul. Prove it.

Bitcoin broke above $80,000 again yesterday, reaching around $80,300, but once again it couldn’t stay there. We’re back around $79,000.

At this point, touching $80K doesn’t matter anymore.

We’ve done that.

Bitcoin needs to turn $80,000 into the floor.

Bitcoin Is Going Sideways, Not Up

If Bitcoin is bouncing between $79,000 and $81,000, we’re basically trading at $80K.

That’s fine.

But it’s not a breakout.

For me, two things need to happen.

First, Bitcoin needs to start finding support around $80,000 instead of immediately falling underneath it every time sellers appear.

Second, we need to move toward $82,000 to $84,000 and establish a new ceiling.

Until that happens, we’re just flopping around near $80K.

And from here, Bitcoin can still go either direction.

The Bull Case Is Still There

There are legitimate reasons to remain bullish.

ETF inflows remain strong.

Treasury buybacks have improved liquidity.

Bitcoin continues benefiting from the dollar-debasement trade.

Nvidia’s earnings reinforced the broader risk environment.

And crypto’s regulatory environment is considerably better than it was a year ago.

Those are real catalysts.

But there are also reasons to remain cautious.

Investors keep taking profits around $80K.

Inflation remains sticky.

Treasury yields remain elevated.

And we’re waiting to see what Fed Chair Kevin Warsh signals at Jackson Hole.

I Still Think We’re in the Four-Year-Cycle Bear Market

Nothing I’ve seen yet has convinced me the traditional Bitcoin cycle is dead.

Could I be wrong?

Absolutely.

But we’re still inside the historical four-year-cycle window.

Bitcoin has rallied hard, but rallies happen inside bear markets.

Right now, I think much of the positive news has already been priced into Bitcoin.

If rates are cut, I don’t necessarily expect some enormous rally.

If rates stay where they are, I don’t expect much.

And even if rates rise, I’m not convinced Bitcoin automatically collapses.

The market knows monetary policy is uncertain.

At this point, Bitcoin has to prove something through price.

Hold $80K.

Then move higher.

Nine Straight Days of Bitcoin ETF Inflows

The ETF demand continues to be one of the strongest parts of the bull case.

Bitcoin ETFs brought in another approximately $242.3 million yesterday, marking nine consecutive days of inflows.

That’s real demand.

It also tells us investors are continuing to rotate capital into Bitcoin even while price struggles against $80K.

If that continues, eventually those buyers could absorb enough of the profit-taking around $80,000 to move the market higher.

SanDisk Went Absolutely Bonkers

Now let’s talk about something outside crypto because this caught me completely by surprise.

SanDisk.

Yes.

The flash-drive company.

The company most people probably associate with thumb drives and memory cards.

SanDisk has increasingly become an AI infrastructure play, and its stock has gone absolutely insane.

The figures discussed in today’s show illustrate just how dramatic the move has been, with the stock moving from around $50 a year ago to extraordinary highs as investors repriced the company around AI infrastructure demand.

So what the hell happened?

AI Needs More Than GPUs

Everybody talks about GPUs.

Nvidia.

Nvidia.

Nvidia.

But AI data centers need considerably more than GPUs.

They need high-bandwidth memory.

NAND flash.

Enterprise SSDs.

Extremely fast interfaces.

Massive amounts of storage.

SanDisk already operates in that world.

So as AI infrastructure spending exploded, investors began looking beyond the obvious GPU companies and further down the AI infrastructure stack.

That’s where SanDisk suddenly became much more interesting.

SanDisk’s Business Changed With AI Demand

The numbers discussed in today’s show illustrate the scale of the shift.

Revenue growth accelerated dramatically.

Data-center revenue expanded.

NAND pricing strengthened.

And stronger memory pricing translated into significantly better margins.

The basic economics aren’t complicated.

AI companies need more memory and storage.

Supply can’t immediately keep up.

Prices rise.

The companies capable of supplying that infrastructure make more money.

That’s what investors started pricing into SanDisk.

Understanding the AI Vertical Is the Bigger Lesson

This reminds me of something Chamath Palihapitiya said years ago that changed how I look at investing.

Understand the verticals.

When electric vehicles started exploding, the obvious trade was:

Buy Tesla.

Buy an EV manufacturer.

But you could go further down the stack.

EVs need batteries.

Batteries need lithium, cobalt and other materials.

If you understand the entire vertical, you can potentially find opportunities before everybody else piles into the most obvious company.

AI works the same way.

Everybody knows Nvidia.

But what about memory?

Storage?

Power?

Cooling?

Data centers?

Networking?

Electricity?

Bitcoin miners converting facilities into AI infrastructure?

I didn’t have SanDisk on my radar.

Maybe I should have.

And maybe there are other companies sitting somewhere inside the AI infrastructure vertical that the market hasn’t completely repriced yet.

Not financial advice.

But it’s something worth paying attention to.

BitGo Buys NYDIG’s Institutional Trading Business

Back in crypto, BitGo has agreed to acquire NYDIG’s institutional trading business.

The deal expands BitGo beyond custody and deeper into institutional digital-asset trading and derivatives infrastructure.

Terms weren’t disclosed.

This is another sign of consolidation among the companies fighting for institutional crypto clients.

Custody.

Trading.

Derivatives.

Prime brokerage.

The infrastructure underneath institutional crypto continues getting built out.

Charles Schwab Expands Its Crypto Offering

Charles Schwab is expanding its crypto platform to include Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink, according to the reporting discussed in today’s show.

Again, crypto keeps getting integrated into mainstream financial platforms.

The question increasingly isn’t whether traditional finance adopts crypto.

It’s how much of crypto eventually gets absorbed into traditional financial services.

Dunamu and Visa Deepen Their Stablecoin Partnership

Dunamu and Visa announced an expanded partnership involving stablecoins, AI and open standards, with OUSD among the assets reportedly being considered.

Stablecoins continue moving deeper into payments infrastructure.

And we’re seeing the same names repeatedly.

Visa.

Mastercard.

Banks.

Brokerages.

Crypto exchanges.

This isn’t a niche experiment anymore.

SEC Crypto Custody Changes Move Through the White House

Proposed SEC changes governing how investment advisers custody digital assets have been sent to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review.

Custody sounds boring.

It isn’t.

If you’re a financial adviser managing somebody’s Bitcoin, where are the private keys?

Who controls them?

What happens if somebody leaves the company?

What happens if the custodian dies?

What happens if someone literally has millions of dollars worth of client seed phrases sitting in a notebook inside a desk drawer?

Crypto has already given us enough examples of what happens when custody is handled badly.

This is why regulation exists.

If financial professionals are going to custody digital assets for clients, there need to be clear standards governing exactly how those assets are protected.

CLARITY Still Carries a Regulatory Premium

Markets are still pricing optimism around the administration’s push for the CLARITY Act.

And I still think some version of it gets done.

The political pressure is simply too large.

Crypto political organizations spent enormous amounts of money supporting candidates.

If lawmakers take that money and then fail to deliver legislation, I don’t think the industry simply keeps writing checks forever.

At some point, Fairshake and other crypto-backed political organizations can say:

You want the money?

Pass the legislation.

Moonwell Investigates a Potential Exploit

Moonwell is investigating an issue affecting its lending market on Base after blockchain-security firms identified what appears to be a multimillion-dollar exploit.

It follows several other major DeFi security incidents this month.

And once again, lending protocols remain particularly complicated.

Smart contracts.

Oracles.

Governance.

Collateral.

Integrations.

Every additional moving part creates another potential failure point.

Nvidia Just Reported $96.2 Billion in Quarterly Revenue

Nvidia reported approximately $96.2 billion in quarterly revenue, roughly $4 billion above Wall Street expectations, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.

The company also forecast approximately $108 billion for the current quarter and continued strong growth into 2028.

That matters beyond Nvidia.

If the largest company at the center of the AI infrastructure boom is still showing enormous demand, it reinforces the broader thesis around memory, storage, data centers and other AI infrastructure.

That’s why the SanDisk story caught my attention.

The AI trade is considerably larger than GPUs.

Bitcoin Treasury Companies Have Lost Around $80 Billion

Here’s another story we’ve been talking about for months.

The Financial Times reported that approximately $80 billion in market capitalization has disappeared from Bitcoin treasury companies since mid-2025.

The combined value of the 50 largest Bitcoin-holding companies reportedly fell from approximately $150 billion to $67 billion.

The problem is straightforward.

Putting Bitcoin on a corporate balance sheet no longer automatically creates some enormous valuation premium.

Some companies are now raising capital or selling Bitcoin simply to service debt and preferred-share obligations.

Which brings us back to Strategy.

When Bitcoin goes up, everything looks brilliant.

When Bitcoin goes down, suddenly you’re selling common stock, maintaining cash reserves, servicing preferred shares and potentially selling Bitcoin.

I’ve said it before.

I don’t understand why this structure makes sense for most companies.

Strategy was first.

But even Strategy’s average Bitcoin acquisition price is now around the $70,000 range.

That’s not early.

Now Everybody Is Calling for $150K Bitcoin

Bernstein now reportedly sees Bitcoin reaching approximately $150,000 by mid-2027, with a longer-term base case around $300,000 by 2029 and an aggressive scenario reaching $500,000.

Of course.

Bitcoin goes up a little and suddenly everybody discovers the $500,000 price target again.

Maybe they’re right.

I hope they’re right.

But I’m remaining cautious.

Bitcoin still hasn’t proven it can hold $80,000.

Let’s accomplish that before we start planning what we’re doing with our half-million-dollar Bitcoin.

Crypto Prices

• Bitcoin: $79,380, essentially flat

• Ethereum: $2,500, essentially flat

• Tether: #3

• BNB: $705

• XRP: $1.42

• USDC: #6

• Solana: $105, up approximately 0.5%

• TRON: $0.341, up approximately 1%

• Hyperliquid: $83.33, up approximately 1%

• Dogecoin: $0.087, down approximately 0.9%

Total Crypto Market Cap: $2.67 trillion

Fear & Greed Index: 81, Extreme Greed

My Take

Bitcoin still hasn’t answered the only question I care about.

Can $80,000 become the floor?

Nine straight days of ETF inflows are bullish.

Treasury liquidity is supportive.

The regulatory environment is improving.

And the broader risk market remains healthy enough that investors aren’t running away from speculative assets.

But Bitcoin is still sideways.

Meanwhile, the SanDisk story is a good reminder that some of the most interesting opportunities in a technological shift aren’t necessarily the companies everybody is talking about.

AI needs GPUs.

But it also needs memory.

Storage.

Power.

Cooling.

Networking.

Data centers.

The same logic could eventually apply to Bitcoin miners that successfully convert their infrastructure toward AI.

Understand the vertical.

Don’t just chase whatever company is already on CNBC every day.

And as for Bitcoin?

Forget $150K.

Forget $300K.

Forget $500K.

Hold $80K first.

Happy HODLing, Everyone.

“We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids.” — Marcus Aurelius

🎵 Song of the Day: “You’ve Got a Friend” — James Taylor — clean, warm, “you just call out my name” — the sound of showing up for each other.

📡 THE NEWS

📊 Market Snapshot

(Live · Thursday Evening · CoinDesk + Decrypt + Fortune)

🟧 BTC: $80,526 (+1.9% · reclaimed $80K, intraday high $80,808) 🚀
🔵 ETH: $2,506 (+2.6% · highest open since August 22) 🚀
🌐 XRP: $1.43 (+1% · holding its weekly gains)
🟣 SOL: $104 (+6% · cohort leader again) 🚀

The Wall Above: stalled under $81,085 (50-week MA) and $82,538 (prior rejection) — the levels to clear
The Streak: eighth straight day of ETF inflows — the underlying bid that reclaimed $80K
RSI: 82.4 — firmly overbought; a pause or profit-taking wouldn’t surprise
Tomorrow: Warsh’s Jackson Hole keynote — at a summit themed “Financial Innovation: Payments and Policy”

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 325 of 363–376 (bottom window Oct 4–17)

Support: $80,000 (reclaimed — must hold) → $78,000 → $76,000 → $74,000 Resistance: $81,085 (50-week MA) → $82,538 (prior rejection) → $84,000

🧠 Satoshi Said It Better

Today: Privacy

The whitepaper says: “The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone.”

In fifth-grade English: Every Bitcoin payment is public — but the names aren’t. It’s like a glass ledger where you can watch money move between numbered lockboxes, but the boxes don’t have names taped to them. Everyone sees whathappened; nobody automatically sees who.

It’s a clever middle path. Banks know everything about you and keep the ledger secret. Bitcoin flips it: the ledger is wide open for anyone to audit, but your identity isn’t stapled to your address by default.

Satoshi’s advice was simple — use a fresh address for each payment, like a new lockbox every time, and the trail gets much harder to follow. Transparent enough that nobody can cheat the system, private enough that the system can’t cheat you. Openness and privacy, usually enemies, working together. 🟧

⚓ Three Bitcoin Stories That Defined Today

🏛️ THE FED’S BIGGEST SUMMIT IS ABOUT CRYPTO’S TURF — A FIRST IN 40 YEARS. Per Decrypt: the 2026 Jackson Hole symposium opened under the theme “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy” — digital payments and fintech infrastructure at the center of the world’s most-watched central-banking conference, for the first time in its four-decade history. Sit with that: the institution Bitcoin was built to route around is now holding its marquee event about the world Bitcoin created. The outsider asset didn’t just get let in the door — the establishment reorganized its head table around the conversation. That’s the domestication thesis in a single agenda.

🚀 BTC RECLAIMED $80K ON THE EIGHTH STRAIGHT INFLOW DAY. Per CoinDesk: Bitcoin climbed back over $80,000 (intraday $80,808), up ~2%, as spot ETFs posted their eighth consecutive day of net inflows — the steady bid doing the work while the price digested. It’s now stalling just under the 50-week MA at $81,085, the exact level that rejected it Tuesday. The relationship story holds: the daily ETF buying is what reclaimed the wall, not a dramatic squeeze. Consistency bought back $80K. But RSI at 82.4 says it’s stretched — the next push through $81K needs Warsh’s blessing tomorrow.

⚠️ OVERBOUGHT INTO THE VERDICT — THE ONE HONEST CAVEAT. Per Decrypt: the charts are flashing overbought (RSI 82.4) even as the broader trend reads bullish — a zone where a pause or profit-taking is normal even in a healthy uptrend. With BTC pressed against $81K resistance and Warsh speaking tomorrow, the setup is coiled: a dovish, innovation-friendly Warsh at a crypto-themed summit could crack $82K+; a hawkish one after hot PCE could send BTC back to test $76–78K. The bid is loyal, the trend is up, and the tape is stretched — all true at once. Tomorrow resolves it.

🍰 Powered By Cake Wallet

Your keys. Your coins. Your privacy. The Fed is hosting a summit about digital payments — a reminder that the whole world is moving onto the rails Bitcoin built. Owning that future means holding it yourself: your keys, your coins, no institution in the middle. Cake Wallet is open-source, non-custodial, and built so the keys live with you — with native Monero support for the privacy-minded. Not financial advice. Just sound money, self-custodied. 🔑

🌅 THE THURSDAY THOUGHT — RELATIONSHIPS (PM EDITION)

When The Outsider Gets Invited In

For 40 years the Fed’s big summit was about their world — rates, banks, the old machinery. This year it’s themed around digital payments and financial innovation. The outsider that was built to route around the establishment just got invited to sit at its head table. And there’s a relationship truth in that worth holding: the way you handle being finally let in says everything about you.

We spend so long as the outsider — to a group, a field, a family, a room — that we rehearse resentment for the day we’re finally welcomed. And when the invitation comes, there’s a temptation to show up bitter (“took you long enough”) or to swagger (“told you I belonged”). Both are traps. The outsider who gets invited in and stays gracious — who brings their difference without the chip on their shoulder — is the one who actually changes the room. Bitterness keeps you an outsider even after you’re welcomed. Grace lets you belong and stay yourself.

The invitation is a test, not a victory lap. Come in with your difference intact and your grievance set down.

🚪 Being invited in is a test of grace — not a chance to gloat or resent.
🤝 Bring your difference, drop the chip — that’s what changes the room.
⚓ Grace lets you belong without losing yourself.

The outsider got invited to the head table. How you walk in is who you become. ⚓

🎯 Your Move

One question: Where have you finally been welcomed into a room you were long kept out of — and are you walking in with grace, or with a chip on your shoulder that keeps you an outsider anyway?

One challenge tonight: If there’s a room, group, or relationship you’ve recently been let into, show up to it without the old grievance — bring your real self, set the resentment down. Grace is what turns “finally invited” into “actually belongs.”

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator

WATCH THIS!

It’s Thursday, August 27th, 2026.

Bitcoin is still fighting with $80,000.

We’ve broken through it.

We’ve traded above it.

We’ve watched it fall back below it.

And we’re now sitting around $79,300.

So I’m going to condense the entire $80K argument into one sentence:

Bitcoin does not need to touch $80,000 again. It needs to turn $80,000 into the floor.

Until that happens, we haven’t really broken $80K.

$80K Needs to Become Support

Bitcoin traded above $80,000 again yesterday before selling off as Asian markets opened.

That’s exactly what we’ve been talking about.

People are taking profits.

There are investors who bought Bitcoin much lower and are sitting on enormous short-term gains. There are investors who bought higher and finally have a chance to get some of their money back.

So $80,000 isn’t the goal anymore.

We’ve already done $80K.

Now Bitcoin needs to move above it, pull back, and find buyers around that level.

That’s when resistance becomes support.

If we start consistently trading above $80K and using it as the floor, then the next stage of this rally becomes much more interesting.

Maybe We’re Getting a Shallower Bear Market

There is some good news in the fact that Bitcoin continues hanging around $80,000 instead of immediately collapsing.

It makes a shallower bear market increasingly plausible.

That doesn’t mean number can’t go down.

It absolutely can.

We could still move back into the $60Ks.

Maybe the $50Ks.

But the longer Bitcoin holds these higher levels, the harder it becomes to argue that we’re definitely going back into the mid-$40Ks or even high-$30Ks.

As Paul wrote in the comments, people forget that bear markets have rallies.

Exactly.

And historically, the four-year Bitcoin cycle hasn’t reached its normal bear-market bottom yet.

We’re still in August.

September hasn’t happened.

October hasn’t happened.

So I’m not ready to throw the four-year cycle out because Bitcoin had one enormous rally.

Could Bitcoin still move back into the $60Ks, fall into the $50Ks, and maybe briefly touch the $40Ks?

Absolutely.

Could some giant macro event send it even lower?

Absolutely.

But every day Bitcoin holds around $80K makes those deeper scenarios a little less likely.

Inflation Came in Hot, but Not THAT Hot

Inflation came in around 3.4%, above expectations of roughly 3.1%.

Everybody immediately started calling it hot.

Okay.

It’s hot.

But it’s not 5%.

It’s not some catastrophic inflation print that completely changes the economic picture.

Thirty basis points above expectations matters at the macro level, but I don’t personally think that’s enough to explain Bitcoin suddenly struggling at $80,000.

Profit taking and resistance remain much simpler explanations.

Bitcoin ETFs Keep Buying

The more important number to me is ETF demand.

Bitcoin ETFs recorded another approximately $232.2 million in inflows yesterday, marking the eighth consecutive day of positive flows.

BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for roughly $200.8 million, Fidelity’s FBTC added approximately $25.6 million, and Bitwise’s BITB brought in around $6 million.

That’s what I want to see.

Eight straight days.

Whatever is causing investors to rotate money back into Bitcoin ETFs, they’re continuing to buy.

That demand is one of the reasons Bitcoin can sit underneath $80K while investors take profits without completely falling apart.

If those flows continue, eventually the sell wall gets absorbed.

The Short Squeeze Got Us Here

We also can’t forget what helped create this move.

Short sellers got annihilated.

Forced liquidations cleared out a significant amount of bearish positioning and accelerated Bitcoin’s move toward $80,000.

But that forced buying doesn’t continue forever.

Eventually the shorts are gone.

Then Bitcoin has to stand on actual demand.

That’s where ETF inflows become much more important.

The squeeze helped get us here.

ETF buyers may determine whether we stay here.

Treasury Liquidity Is Still Supporting Bitcoin

The other major piece remains Treasury liquidity and the weaker dollar.

We’ve talked about this repeatedly over the past week.

Changes in Treasury-market liquidity helped revive the debasement trade.

Investors look at government debt, currency pressure, Treasury buybacks and the broader fiscal situation and decide they want scarce assets.

Gold.

Bitcoin.

That’s still one of the strongest macro explanations for why Bitcoin moved in the first place.

Nvidia Didn’t Blow Everything Up

Nvidia reported earnings, and the results were good enough that we didn’t get some giant AI-driven market selloff.

That’s important for Bitcoin.

Crypto and AI aren’t the same trade, but there is overlap in the risk appetite surrounding them.

Bitcoin miners are moving into AI infrastructure.

Publicly traded crypto companies trade alongside other technology and high-growth assets.

If Nvidia had completely shit the bed, investors could have started pulling money from AI stocks, miners, Coinbase, and other adjacent companies.

That could have spilled into Bitcoin.

Instead, Nvidia projected strong continued growth, including roughly 70% revenue growth for the fiscal year ending January 2028, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.

So at least that particular grenade didn’t go off.

Kevin Warsh Is the Bigger Story Now

Tomorrow’s speech at Jackson Hole from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh could be considerably more important.

There are basically two major monetary-policy tools we’re watching.

Interest rates and the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.

Lower rates are generally supportive of Bitcoin and other risk assets.

Higher rates generally aren’t.

But Warsh has historically been much more interested in reducing the size of the Fed’s balance sheet.

And that’s where things get complicated.

A shrinking balance sheet can remove liquidity from the financial system.

Bitcoin likes liquidity.

So you could theoretically have a Fed that’s friendlier toward lower rates while simultaneously becoming more aggressive about reducing its balance sheet.

Those two forces don’t necessarily point in the same direction for Bitcoin.

Don’t Expect Warsh to Tell Us Exactly What He’s Doing

We’re used to Jerome Powell.

Powell would speak.

Markets would parse the language.

The Fed would signal what it was considering.

Traders would start pricing it in.

Then eventually the Fed would do the thing everybody had spent weeks talking about.

I’m not convinced Warsh is going to operate the same way.

I don’t expect him to walk into Jackson Hole tomorrow and say:

“Here’s exactly what we’re doing with rates and here’s exactly what we’re doing with the balance sheet.”

I think we’re more likely to get philosophy.

Strategy.

His view of what the Federal Reserve should be.

Then every economist and trader on Earth will spend the rest of the day analyzing every word trying to figure out what the hell he actually meant.

That’s what I’m watching tomorrow.

Warsh Doesn’t View Bitcoin as the Enemy

Here’s the interesting part for crypto.

Warsh has previously argued that Bitcoin doesn’t make him nervous.

He has described Bitcoin as something that can impose market discipline on policymakers and potentially provide a signal when monetary authorities are getting policy wrong.

He isn’t arguing Bitcoin should replace the dollar.

He also distinguishes Bitcoin and legitimate blockchain innovation from the enormous pile of speculative tokens whose valuations he questions.

Basically:

Bitcoin?

Interesting.

Blockchain?

Useful.

The other 40,000 pieces of shit?

Maybe not.

Fair enough.

What Does Bitcoin as a “Signal” Actually Mean?

This is the part I’m trying to understand.

My interpretation is that when people aggressively rotate money into Bitcoin, gold, and other scarce assets, they’re telling policymakers something.

They’re saying:

“I don’t trust what you’re doing with money.”

They’re moving away from the normal economy and toward assets they believe can protect them from monetary policy.

If that’s what Warsh means by Bitcoin acting as a signal, then Bitcoin mooning isn’t necessarily something he wants.

It’s evidence that markets may be questioning monetary credibility.

So I don’t think Warsh is necessarily bullish for Bitcoin.

He’s bullish in the sense that he doesn’t appear to view Bitcoin as something the Fed needs to attack.

That’s good.

But I don’t think the Fed chair wants to see people abandoning dollars and aggressively piling into Bitcoin either.

Bitcoin isn’t the Fed’s enemy.

It isn’t the Fed’s savior.

It’s potentially the warning light on the dashboard.

Crypto Prices

• Bitcoin: $79,330, up approximately 1.7%

• Ethereum: $2,500, up approximately 2.1%

• Tether: #3

• BNB: $707, up approximately 1.1%

• XRP: $1.42, up approximately 2.3%

• USDC: #6

• Solana: $104, up approximately 8%

• TRON: $0.337

• Hyperliquid: $82.51

• Dogecoin: $0.087, up approximately 2.5%

Total Crypto Market Cap: $2.67 trillion, up approximately 1.6%

Fear & Greed Index: Extreme Greed

My Take

Bitcoin is still doing exactly what we should expect around $80,000.

The important question isn’t whether we touch it tomorrow.

It’s whether $80K eventually becomes support.

The good news is ETF buyers keep showing up.

Treasury liquidity remains supportive.

Nvidia didn’t trigger an AI-market selloff.

And Bitcoin continues holding near the top of this rally rather than immediately collapsing.

The uncertainty is the Fed.

Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech could give us the first real indication of how he thinks about rates, the balance sheet and liquidity under his leadership.

And liquidity is ultimately what I’m watching.

Bitcoin doesn’t need another headline.

It needs buyers.

Turn $80K into the floor.

Then we can start talking seriously about $90K.

Happy HODLing, Everyone.

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” — Marcus Aurelius

🎵 Song of the Day: “The Climb” — Miley Cyrus — clean, and “ain’t about how fast I get there” — the faith is in the climb, not the perfect day.

📡 THE NEWS

📊 Market Snapshot

(Live · Wednesday Evening · CoinDesk + Crypto Times + KuCoin)

🟧 BTC: $78,747 (high $81,235 Tue → dipped on hot PCE → holding $78K)
🔵 ETH: $2,495 (+2.2% · firmed into the evening) 🚀
🌐 XRP: $1.41 (-2% · still +45% on the week)
🟣 SOL: $100.33 (+3.9% · reclaimed $100) 🚀

The Curveball: July PCE ran hotter than expected → BTC slipped from $81K back toward $78K as rate worries crept back
The Support: BTC ETFs logged $338M inflows Aug 24 — a sixth straight day (spot demand not retreating)
After the Bell: Nvidia topped Q2 estimates — a risk-appetite tailwind into Thursday Friday: Warsh at Jackson Hole— now even more the swing vote after a hot inflation print

⏱️ Cycle clock: Day 324 of 363–376 (bottom window Oct 4–17)

Support: $77,000–$78,000 (holding) → $76,000 → $74,000 → $71,545 (200-day)
Resistance: $80,000 (the wall) → $81,235 (Tue high) → $84,000

🧠 Satoshi Said It Better

Today: The mining incentive

The whitepaper says: “By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block.”

In fifth-grade English: Why would thousands of people burn real electricity solving puzzles to keep this notebook honest? Because whoever seals the next page gets paid — brand-new Bitcoin, plus the tips from every payment they just processed.

It’s genius and it’s simple: honesty is the profitable move. Play fair, earn coins worth keeping. Try to cheat, and you torch a fortune in power to attack a system whose coins you’d make worthless anyway. Satoshi didn’t ask miners to be good — he made being good the best-paying job in the room.

No boss enforces it. No rule commands it. The math pays honesty better than fraud — so the whole thing runs on nothing but self-interest pointed the right way. That’s not a loophole. That’s the most elegant trick in the entire nine pages. 🟧

⚓ Three Bitcoin Stories That Defined Today

🌡️ HOT PCE COOLED THE TAPE — BUT DIDN’T BREAK IT. Per Crypto Times: July PCE inflation ran hotter than expected, and BTC — which had hit $81,235 Tuesday — slipped back toward $78,000 as traders reassessed the odds of Fed cuts. Here’s the honest read: the rally’s been running on the hope of easier money, so a hot inflation print is a real wrinkle. But BTC didn’t break — it dipped and held its $77–78K support, exactly the “high-level consolidation” a healthy market does. The number wasn’t perfect, and the base held anyway. That’s the tell that matters more than the print itself.

💰 SPOT DEMAND ISN’T RETREATING — SIXTH STRAIGHT ETF INFLOW DAY. Per KuCoin: US spot Bitcoin ETFs logged $338M in net inflows on August 24 — a sixth consecutive day of buying. While the price chops on a hot inflation number, the institutional bid keeps showing up daily. This is the quiet strength under the noisy tape: short-term traders react to PCE; long-term allocators keep stacking regardless. As long as ETF demand cushions the pullbacks, the “high-level consolidation” thesis holds and the dips stay shallow. Six days of inflows says conviction, not fear.

🎙️ WARSH FRIDAY JUST GOT MORE IMPORTANT. Per CoinDesk: with PCE running hot, Warsh’s first Jackson Hole keynote as Fed chair on Friday becomes the whole ballgame. Markets still price a September hold at ~60%, but a hot inflation print plus a hawkish Warsh could revive rate fear and pressure this liquidity-driven rally. The flip side: a measured, dovish-leaning Warsh who looks past one hot number could be the catalyst that cracks $80K for real. Everything hinges on Friday — and tonight’s Nvidia beat keeps risk appetite alive into it. Faith gets tested at the podium.

🍰 Powered By Cake Wallet

Your keys. Your coins. Your privacy. A hot inflation print, a Fed speech Friday, a market holding its breath — none of it touches the coins in your own custody. Self-custody is faith you don’t have to place in anyone: no data release, no Fed chair, no middleman decides whether your Bitcoin stays yours. Cake Wallet is open-source, non-custodial, and built so the keys live with you — with native Monero support for the privacy-minded. Not financial advice. Just sound money, self-custodied. 🔑

🌅 THE WEDNESDAY THOUGHT — FAITH (PM EDITION)

Faith Doesn’t Need Perfect Conditions

The inflation number came in hot today, and Bitcoin dipped. And here’s the quiet question it asks of everyone holding: did your conviction need the number to be perfect? Because if one hot print can shake you out, what you had wasn’t faith — it was a bet on ideal conditions.

Real faith doesn’t require everything to line up. It holds through the imperfect data, the disappointing day, the number that came in wrong. Fragile conviction needs a clean runway — every print favorable, every headline kind, every day green — and the world simply never delivers that for long. The moment reality gets messy, fragile faith folds. Durable faith expects the mess and holds anyway, because it was never anchored to perfect conditions in the first place.

That’s the difference between belief that survives and belief that evaporates. One is anchored to something real underneath — the thesis, the base, the reason. The other is anchored to a good mood, and good moods don’t survive a hot PCE print. Anchor deeper than the daily data.

🌡️ Faith doesn’t need perfect conditions — that’s a bet, not belief. ⚓ Anchor to the thesis, not the mood — the mess is coming regardless. 🪨 Durable faith expects the imperfect and holds.

The number ran hot; the base held. Anchor deeper than the data. ⚓

🎯 Your Move

One question: Does your conviction — in the market, or anywhere in your life — need conditions to be perfect? Because that’s the kind that folds the first time a number comes in hot.

One challenge tonight: Take one belief you’re holding and ask what it’s actually anchored to — the real thesis underneath, or just a string of good days? Anchor it deeper tonight. The perfect conditions were never coming; durable faith never needed them.

Stack sats. Stack self-awareness. Both compound. — The Inspirator

WATCH THIS!

It’s Wednesday, August 26th, 2026.

And Bitcoin is doing almost exactly what we’ve been talking about.

It gets to $80,000.

It gets rejected.

It falls back.

It comes up again.

It gets rejected again.

Bitcoin is now sitting around $78,300, and this $80,000 level has become the first serious test of whether this rally actually has legs.

I’ve been saying that $80K was going to be difficult.

The question now isn’t whether Bitcoin can briefly trade above $80,000. We’ve already seen that.

The question is whether Bitcoin can break through $80K and stay there.

Profit Taking Is the Biggest Problem

The simplest explanation for why this rally has stalled is profit taking.

Think about how institutional investors look at this.

The S&P 500 historically gives you somewhere around 10% annually over long periods, depending on exactly how you’re measuring it.

Bitcoin just gave investors roughly 25% in a very short period of time.

If you’re a portfolio manager sitting on a gain like that, you’re probably taking some money off the table.

That’s the difference between Bitcoin today and Bitcoin fifteen years ago.

The days when everybody buying Bitcoin was simply screaming “HODL” and waiting for a 10,000% return are over.

Bitcoin is now owned through ETFs.

It’s owned by institutions.

It’s inside professionally managed portfolios.

Those investors rebalance.

They take profits.

They manage risk.

And a 20% or 25% return is a damn good trade.

That creates natural selling pressure.

The Short Squeeze Did a Lot of the Heavy Lifting

There’s another reason Bitcoin’s momentum has slowed.

A substantial portion of the first move higher came from forced buying.

Approximately $1.4 billion in Bitcoin shorts were liquidated on August 19, followed by another roughly $740 million on August 21, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.

When you’re short Bitcoin and price starts ripping higher, eventually you’re forced to close.

Closing a short requires buying.

That buying pushes Bitcoin higher.

Which liquidates more shorts.

Which creates more buying.

It’s a beautiful mechanism when you’re long.

Not so beautiful when you’re the guy getting liquidated.

But once that forced buying runs its course, Bitcoin needs another source of demand to continue higher.

That’s where we are now.

$6.4 Billion in Bitcoin Options Expire Friday

There’s another short-term issue.

Approximately $6.4 billion in Bitcoin options are scheduled to expire Friday, immediately following Bitcoin’s move from roughly $62,000 to $80,000.

That can amplify volatility around the market.

So we have profit taking.

The short squeeze losing some of its fuel.

A massive options expiration.

And Bitcoin sitting directly underneath a major psychological resistance level.

There’s plenty of reason for the market to pause here.

What Does Bitcoin Need to Break $80K?

The first thing is sustained ETF demand.

Bitcoin ETFs reportedly brought in approximately $314 million on Tuesday, marking seven consecutive days of inflows.

August inflows have now reached roughly $3 billion.

That’s important.

If investors continue selling around $80,000, somebody needs to absorb that supply.

ETF demand can do it.

What we don’t want is one giant day of inflows followed by money disappearing again.

Bitcoin needs consistent buying.

Bitcoin Needs to Turn $80K Into the Floor

The second thing is a clean daily close above $80,000.

And when I say above $80K, I’m not talking about Bitcoin touching $80,500 for twenty minutes and then trading at $78,000 all day.

That’s not breaking $80K.

I want Bitcoin trading around $81,000.

Then $82,000.

Maybe $83,000.

Then when it pulls back, instead of collapsing to $77,000 or $78,000, it finds support around $80,000.

Maybe that’s $79,500.

Maybe $79,300.

Whatever.

The important thing is that the market begins spending more time above $80,000 than below it.

That’s when resistance starts becoming support.

From there, I think $82K, $84K and $88K become the next levels before we start fighting with $90,000.

Don’t Assume It’s a Clear Path to $100K

This is where people get themselves into trouble.

You’ll hear:

“If Bitcoin breaks $80K, there’s no resistance until $100K.”

No.

That’s not how markets work.

Maybe the current order book looks thin above $80,000.

But what happens when somebody wakes up tomorrow and Bitcoin is trading at $85,000?

They put in a sell order.

Somebody else bought at $60,000 and suddenly has a 40% gain.

They sell some.

Another investor has been underwater for months and finally sees an opportunity to get their money back.

They sell.

The path looks clear until price gets there.

Then everybody shows up.

That’s why $90,000 will be difficult.

And $100,000 will be extremely difficult.

If Bitcoin blows through $100K and starts holding $105K or $110K, something much larger has changed.

At that point, we’re having a completely different conversation.

The Bond Market Still Matters More Than Oil

There’s plenty of macroeconomic discussion around oil and the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil is trading around $86 a barrel.

Does cheaper oil help consumers?

Sure.

Does it help me personally?

Absolutely.

I drive something that gets around 15 miles per gallon on premium. Put my camper behind it and I’m getting about nine.

I’ve basically rediscovered my bicycle.

But I don’t think people are looking at cheaper oil and saying:

“You know what I’m going to do? Buy Bitcoin.”

The Treasury market is considerably more important to this rally.

Treasury has expanded its debt-buyback plans, shifting some pressure away from bonds and toward the dollar.

That strengthens the debasement trade.

If investors believe the government may need to buy enormous amounts of its own debt while fiscal pressure continues building, scarce assets become more attractive.

Gold.

Bitcoin.

That’s the macro story I’m watching.

Revolut Begins Rolling Out a Euro Stablecoin

Revolut has begun phasing in its EURR euro-backed stablecoin for selected customers in Denmark, Poland and Portugal.

The stablecoin is designed to maintain a one-euro value, with reserves structured under Europe’s MiCA regulatory framework and integration directly into Revolut’s retail application.

This is another example of stablecoins becoming ordinary financial infrastructure.

We’re moving beyond crypto-native companies issuing tokens primarily for traders.

Mainstream financial platforms are beginning to integrate stablecoins directly into products used by ordinary customers.

The Tornado Cash Retrial Moves to 2027

Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s retrial has been delayed until April 26, 2027.

Storm was convicted last year on one money-transmission count, while the jury failed to reach a verdict on other charges.

And this case raises a question I’ve struggled with from the beginning.

How responsible should a software developer be for what people do with the software they create?

Tornado Cash was designed to obscure transaction histories.

That can provide legitimate financial privacy.

It can also obviously be used by criminals to obscure stolen or illicit funds.

Both things can be true.

But writing software that enables privacy isn’t the same thing as personally laundering somebody’s money.

Where does the developer’s responsibility end and the user’s responsibility begin?

I don’t think that’s an easy question.

And I want to hear what you guys think.

Crypto Prices

• Bitcoin: $78,364, down approximately 0.8% in 24 hours but still up 21% over seven days

• Ethereum: $2,456, down approximately 0.7%

• Tether: #3

• BNB: $701

• XRP: $1.41, down approximately 4.4% but still up 40% over seven days

• USDC: #6

• Solana: $96.87, down approximately 1.4%

• TRON: $0.335, down approximately 2%

• Hyperliquid: $81.97, up approximately 2.4%

• Dogecoin: $0.086, down approximately 4.2%

Total Crypto Market Cap: $2.63 trillion

Fear & Greed Index: 80, Extreme Greed

My Take

Bitcoin’s problem isn’t getting to $80,000.

It’s finding enough buyers to absorb everyone who wants to sell there.

The short squeeze helped get us here.

Now Bitcoin needs something more sustainable.

ETF inflows are probably the most important immediate indicator.

If institutional money keeps coming in and Bitcoin can establish $80,000 as support, I think $90,000 becomes very realistic.

But don’t confuse breaking $80K with having an empty highway to $100K.

Every time Bitcoin moves higher, new sellers appear.

People take profits.

Institutions rebalance.

Old bag holders finally get their money back.

That’s what a mature market looks like.

Bitcoin has already proven it can touch $80,000.

Now prove it can live there.

Happy HODLing, Everyone.