Bitcoin (BTC) stalled near $79,000 on Wednesday, a day after the price cleared $81,000 and capped its fastest weekly advance in roughly five years.
Key Points:
- Bitcoin traded around $79,000 on Wednesday after peaking above $81,000 in the previous session.
- The rally carried the price up from the mid-$60,000s in under a week, powered by Treasury bond buybacks and forced short covering.
- July inflation data and Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole speech as Fed chair now sit directly in the market's path.
Bitcoin Rally Meets $82,000 Resistance
The largest cryptocurrency gained about 1% on Wednesday and hovered around $79,000 during London trading, with a thick band of resistance sitting between $82,000 and $83,000. Tuesday looked different, when the price touched $81,023 in early U.S. hours before sellers dragged it back below $80,000. The reversal took hours, not days.
The climb started on Aug. 19, after the U.S. Treasury said it would double its purchases of longer-dated government bonds, a step that pushed the dollar lower and revived appetite for scarce assets. Billions of dollars in bearish bets were wiped out as the price ran, and open interest in Bitcoin-denominated futures fell to a five-month low, a sign that forced buying mattered more than fresh leverage.
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Hathorn Warns On Overbought Bitcoin
Daniela Hathorn, a senior market analyst at Capital.com, cautioned that Bitcoin faces a far higher bar to clear after its strongest weekly rally in years. The daily RSI reached about 84 on Tuesday, a reading that normally marks an exhausted move rather than a fresh one. Sentiment gauges have swung hard toward greed, reaching their highest readings in about 11 months.
One technical read argued that a retreat toward $69,700 would let Bitcoin test its 200-day simple moving average as support, a healthier outcome than an unbroken vertical run. Other analysts placed the next upside target near $95,000, but only if buyers take out $82,000 and hold it.
Warsh Speech Tests Crypto Momentum
Wednesday's U.S. data calendar carries the July personal consumption expenditures price index alongside a revision to second-quarter growth, and both feed directly into rate expectations. Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote as Federal Reserve chair on Friday morning. Traders have almost no policy record to price against, which turns the speech into a two-way risk for crypto and for the dollar.
Bitcoin has still been the month's standout, climbing roughly 23% since Aug. 1 and heading for its best August since 2017, when it rose 65%. The historical median return for August is a loss of about 7%.
The context behind that August number is a long grind lower. Bitcoin peaked above $126,000 in October 2025, then spent most of 2026 sliding through a downtrend that ran about 10 months, and it changed hands under $63,000 as recently as mid-August. Wednesday's price still sits far below where it stood a year ago.
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