Good morning everybody.
It’s Tuesday, August 25th, 2026.
And Bitcoin did exactly what we talked about yesterday.
It broke $80,000, pushed up to roughly $81,100, and then immediately started sliding back into the $79,000 and $78,000 range.
That’s not surprising.
$80,000 is a big psychological number. People love round numbers when they’re taking profits, and there is a lot of money sitting in Bitcoin from investors who just watched their portfolios get crushed during the move from the previous highs down toward $60,000.
Getting above $80,000 was one thing.
Holding above it is the real test.
Why $80K Is Such a Difficult Wall
There is nothing magical about $80,000.
It’s psychology.
People set sell orders at round numbers.
People who bought higher finally see an opportunity to recover some of their losses.
People who bought around $60,000 are suddenly sitting on gains of more than 30% and start thinking:
“Maybe I should take some money off the table.”
That’s why I always say that if you’re planning to take profits at a round number, you might want to put that order slightly below it.
If everybody is waiting to sell at $80,000, maybe you’re selling at $79,800 instead.
You give up $200 in exchange for getting ahead of the wall.
Bitcoin broke through $80,000 once.
Now it has to prove it can actually stay there.
Treasury Liquidity Is Still Driving the Rally
The biggest macro driver remains the Treasury market.
Reuters reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s plan to increase purchases of longer-duration bonds helped reduce pressure on long-term yields, weaken the dollar, and increase demand for alternative assets including Bitcoin and gold.
That’s still the foundation underneath this rally.
Liquidity improves.
Bond-market pressure eases.
The dollar weakens.
Capital becomes more willing to move into assets like Bitcoin.
That is a more important signal to me than almost any individual crypto headline.
Profit Taking Pulls Bitcoin Back Below $80K
Once Bitcoin crossed $80,000, the sellers showed up.
And that’s exactly what should happen.
People take profits.
Traders close positions.
Investors who spent months underwater finally see a chance to reduce risk.
If Bitcoin can move through that selling and eventually reach something like $84,000, I think the market starts looking considerably stronger.
From there, maybe the next real psychological battle moves toward $90,000.
But $90,000 will be difficult too.
And $100,000?
In this market, I think that is going to be extremely difficult.
If Bitcoin can break $100,000 and then establish itself around $105,000 or $107,000, we’re having a completely different conversation.
That’s no longer simply a bear-market rally.
A Pullback to $75K Would Be Normal
Bitcoin does not need to keep moving vertically for this rally to remain healthy.
A pullback toward $75,000 or $76,000 would be completely normal.
Even $71,000 or $70,000 wouldn’t necessarily invalidate the entire move.
Where I would start getting much more skeptical is if Bitcoin falls back below $70,000 and spends several days there.
At that point, you can start arguing that what we just experienced was essentially a rally from one sideways range into another before the broader bear market resumed.
Bear markets do this all the time.
Price falls.
A catalyst appears.
People pile back in.
Bitcoin jumps 20% or 30%.
Everyone declares the bear market over.
Then the broader downtrend resumes.
That possibility has not disappeared.
I’m Still Watching the Four-Year Cycle
I want number to go up.
Obviously.
But I’m still looking at Bitcoin through the historical four-year cycle.
I’ve never seen this market simply produce a shallow bear and then immediately reverse into another sustained bull run.
Maybe this time is different.
But until the market proves otherwise, I’m going to keep the traditional cycle in the back of my mind.
If Bitcoin eventually resumes a normal bear-market structure, I still think prices in the $40,000 range remain possible.
Not financial advice.
That’s simply what I’m watching.
There is an interesting trade-off here.
If this cycle produces a very shallow bear, maybe the next bull market is also shallower.
Instead of some enormous move, perhaps the next top is $150,000 or $180,000.
If we get a more traditional deep bear, perhaps the eventual upside becomes much larger.
Maybe $250,000.
Maybe $300,000.
Nobody knows.
But volatility tends to work in both directions.
ETF Inflows Are the Stability Test
Bitcoin ETFs posted five consecutive days of inflows totaling nearly $2 billion last week.
That matters because sustained ETF buying creates one of the clearest forms of persistent spot demand.
But there’s an important caveat.
Bitcoin ETFs are still down approximately $2.8 billion in net flows year to date, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.
So the money has started coming back.
It hasn’t completely reversed what left earlier this year.
That’s why ETF flows remain one of the most important things to watch.
If Bitcoin keeps pushing against $80,000 while ETF money continues coming in, the sellers have somebody on the other side of the trade.
If those inflows disappear, the wall becomes much harder to break.
Coinbase Launches Tokenized Stocks on Base
Coinbase is launching tokenized stocks on the Base network, beginning with blockchain-based representations of companies including Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and Alphabet under its Abu Dhabi regulatory framework.
We’ve been talking about this convergence for months.
Crypto exchanges are becoming brokerages.
Brokerages are becoming crypto platforms.
Stocks are becoming tokens.
Funds are moving on-chain.
Eventually, the line between “crypto” and “traditional finance” is going to become increasingly meaningless.
You’ll simply own assets.
Some of them will happen to settle on blockchain rails.
Franklin Templeton Expands Tokenized Funds in Asia
Franklin Templeton and HashKey are also rolling out tokenized U.S. money-market funds in Asia.
Again, this is not speculative meme-coin activity.
This is traditional asset management moving conventional financial products onto blockchain infrastructure.
Tokenized stocks.
Tokenized Treasury products.
Tokenized funds.
This is what institutional blockchain adoption increasingly looks like.
BitMine Buys $81 Million of Ethereum
BitMine purchased approximately $81 million worth of Ethereum as institutional interest in ETH continues growing.
Ethereum has benefited significantly during this rally, and institutional demand increasingly includes more than just Bitcoin.
That matters because ETH gives institutions exposure to both price appreciation and potentially staking-related yield, even as Ethereum developers continue debating how those rewards should work long term.
CLARITY Optimism Is Still Supporting the Market
Bitcoin has risen roughly 16% since President Trump publicly pushed Congress to pass clearer crypto legislation last week.
That political optimism remains part of the rally.
But I think there are two obvious political forces operating behind the scenes.
The first is campaign money.
Fairshake and other crypto-aligned political organizations spent heavily supporting candidates because they wanted legislation that gave the industry clear rules.
These companies didn’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars simply to get invited to White House meetings.
They want results.
If Congress reaches September and the CLARITY Act still isn’t moving, I would not be surprised if some of that political funding starts getting withheld.
Maybe not spent against Republicans.
But simply not spent at all.
That’s leverage.
Trump Has His Own Reason to Want CLARITY Passed
The second issue is Trump’s own crypto businesses.
World Liberty Financial.
Its stablecoin.
Trump-related tokens.
Other family crypto ventures.
The CLARITY Act’s ethics provisions have become one of the major sticking points because Democrats want stronger rules governing conflicts of interest involving public officials.
Trump has an obvious interest in how those provisions are written.
That doesn’t automatically mean something improper is happening.
It does mean the legislation directly intersects with businesses connected to the president and his family.
That makes the politics much more complicated than simply:
Republicans like crypto.
Democrats don’t.
There’s money on every side of this.
Blockchain Association Backs GENIUS Act Rules
The Blockchain Association has backed Treasury’s proposed rules implementing the GENIUS Act.
This is important because stablecoin regulation is now moving from theory into actual operations.
Clear rules around issuance, reserves, licensing, compliance, and redemption could increase confidence in the dollar-based liquidity rails that support exchanges, DeFi, tokenized assets, and crypto settlement.
Stablecoins aren’t some side product anymore.
They’re financial infrastructure.
And the rules being written now could determine who controls that infrastructure for years.
Exchange Activity Is Coming Back
Crypto exchange volumes have reportedly doubled over the past five days as the market rally brought traders back.
That makes sense.
When Bitcoin goes down, people stop paying attention.
They stop trading.
They stop opening CoinMarketCap.
They stop listening to crypto podcasts.
I know because I’ve watched it happen with this show.
When number goes up, everybody comes back.
Old investors start checking prices again.
New investors get FOMO.
People remember their exchange passwords.
And suddenly crypto is interesting again.
That’s actually encouraging.
It tells you people didn’t disappear permanently.
They were just waiting.
The Third $80K Test Could Matter
Bitcoin is trading around $79,163 this morning after reaching approximately $81,000.
We’ve now had multiple interactions with the $80,000 area.
From a technical perspective, the next test becomes interesting.
Bitcoin comes up.
Hits resistance.
Gets rejected.
Comes back.
Breaks through.
Gets rejected again.
Now we see what happens when it approaches that level again.
If Bitcoin pushes through and holds, the market may finally begin treating $80,000 as support rather than resistance.
If it gets rejected hard again, this rally probably needs a reset.
Crypto Prices
Bitcoin: $79,163, up roughly 24% over seven days
Ethereum: $2,472, up approximately 30% over seven days
Tether: #3
BNB: $697
XRP: $1.46
USDC: #6
Solana: $97.82
TRON: $0.342
Hyperliquid: $79.69, up approximately 35% over seven days
Dogecoin: $0.089
Total Crypto Market Cap: $2.65 trillion
Fear & Greed Index: 80, Extreme Greed
My Take
The market is doing exactly what I expected around $80,000.
It broke through.
People took profits.
Bitcoin fell back.
Now we test it again.
The rally has legitimate support underneath it.
Treasury liquidity improved.
ETF inflows returned.
Exchange volume is increasing.
Tokenized finance continues growing.
And crypto regulation remains a major political issue.
But we’re also sitting at 80 on the Fear & Greed Index after Bitcoin moved more than 20% in a week.
That is exactly when people start convincing themselves nothing can go wrong.
Something always can.
I want Bitcoin above $80,000.
I want it above $90,000.
I want it above $100,000.
But I want it to earn those levels.
Break $80K.
Hold it.
Then we’ll talk about $90K.