Bitcoin crossed $80,000 on Wednesday for the first time in roughly three months, capping a 25 percent rally since Aug. 19 that has turned one of the worst stretches in crypto history into the coin’s best August in nine years.
The surge has been fueled by a flood of new money into U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which pulled in $1.9 billion in net inflows last week. That is the strongest weekly tally since October 2025, when Bitcoin hit its all-time high of $126,198. For anyone who has watched crypto prices on a phone screen while waiting for the 58 bus, the whiplash is real: Bitcoin fell below $63,000 earlier this month before reversing course in dramatic fashion.
The question now is whether this is a genuine recovery or another bear-market head fake.
A technical line in the sand at $77,752
TradingView reported that Bitcoin closed last week at $77,727 on Bitstamp, just barely scraping above its 50-week exponential moving average, a key resistance trendline sitting at $77,752. That weekly close was the first above the 50-week EMA since early November 2025.
The line matters because traders watch it closely during bear markets. In prior downturns, Bitcoin retested the 50-week EMA before capitulating to new lows. Crypto trader and analyst Rekt Capital warned that the entire area around $80,000 figures as resistance for bulls to overcome, and that each bear-market relief rally so far has retraced sharply in the week following a strong breakout.
Bitcoin was trading around $77,500 at the time of TradingView’s report, consolidating after the push higher. The price is up 22 percent month-to-date.
Who is making money and who is still underwater
The rally has shifted the profit picture for different groups of Bitcoin holders. CryptoQuant calculated that short-term holders, wallets holding coins for less than 155 days, now sit at just over 11 percent net profitability. Long-term holder profitability jumped from roughly breakeven to positive 18.5 percent, while so-called new money profitability climbed from negative 1.4 percent to positive 12.7 percent.
That new money now has a breakeven point at $73,000, which is above both the short-term and long-term holder cost basis. CryptoQuant flagged the $68,000 to $73,000 region as the key zone to watch. Holding above it would suggest the profitability reset is becoming structurally durable. Losing it would push a large share of recent buyers back into the red.
ETF demand roars back after record outflows
The ETF numbers tell a stark turnaround story. June saw unprecedented net outflows of more than $4.5 billion from U.S. spot Bitcoin funds. By contrast, total August inflows stood at $2.38 billion as of late last week, a new year-to-date record.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust saw net inflows of more than half a billion dollars on Thursday alone as Bitcoin extended gains beyond $70,000. Gracie Lin, chief executive of crypto exchange OKX SG, told Bloomberg that the consistent daily inflows suggest renewed investor interest, but added that some profit-taking after such a strong move would not be surprising.
The comparison to October 2025 is hard to ignore. Bitcoin News noted on X that during the October flash crash, Bitcoin plunged from around $121,000 to as low as $107,000 as more than $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in one of the largest deleveraging events in crypto history. Nearly 10 months later, ETF demand has returned to those levels.
The bear case has not gone away
Not everyone is convinced the bottom is in. 10x Research’s proprietary Bull/Bear Market Indicator flashed a bearish signal in October 2025, and the firm has maintained a tactically bearish stance, anticipating a potential pullback toward $100,000.
CryptoQuant’s Bull-Bear Market Cycle Indicator reinforces that caution. The model’s 365-day moving average has dropped close to zero and entered the “Bear” zone. Historically, when that average falls below zero, it signals the start of a prolonged bear market.
A four-year cycle study by analytics firm Alphractal continues to track accurately. That model placed the cycle peak around October 2025, followed by a potential bottom in October 2026. Analyst Alejandro on X highlighted the monthly Relative Strength Index trendline, noting that a bear market begins each time the RSI breaks its long-term upward trendline. In the current cycle, the same retest pattern that preceded prior major crashes has just occurred.
Jackson Hole, Treasury moves and the macro backdrop
The rally does not exist in a vacuum. TradingView reported that Fed Chair Kevin Warsh faces his first keynote speech at the annual Jackson Hole economic symposium this week, with U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures data due Wednesday. CME Group’s FedWatch Tool shows 63.1 percent odds of rates holding at 3.50 to 3.75 percent after the September meeting.
Last week, the U.S. Treasury at least doubled the size of its debt buyback purchases to $4 billion per operation. That announcement sparked a Bitcoin short squeeze that wiped out a record $3.1 billion in crypto short positions over two days. Trading resource Mosaic Asset Company argued the intervention amounted to a form of yield curve control, with short-term bonds issued to cover the cost.
Bitcoin remains five times larger than the next biggest crypto token, with a valuation bigger than the rest of the crypto industry combined. Its price swings are driven by a hard supply cap of 21 million coins, the outsized influence of roughly 10,000 large holders who control an estimated one-third of supply, and constant competition for risk-tolerant capital from AI stocks and newer crypto assets.
Gold’s market cap currently hovers above $32 trillion. Bitcoin’s sits under $2 trillion. Whether that gap narrows over the coming years may matter more than whether the price holds $80,000 this week. But for now, the $68,000 to $73,000 support zone and the Fed’s next moves will determine whether August’s rally has legs or becomes another chapter in the bear-market playbook.