Hey,
Bitcoin crossed $80,000 this week. A month ago the Fear and Greed Index read 26. Today it’s 74.
That’s not a recovery. That’s a mood swing.
August 19: the US Treasury doubled its long-bond buyback program to at least $4 billion per session. A liquidity move, not a crypto move. Long-term yields fell, financial conditions eased, and risk assets caught a bid. Bitcoin moved first.
Higher prices then triggered around $4.3 billion in forced short liquidations. Traders betting against Bitcoin got margin-called, their forced buying pushed price up further, and that liquidated the next batch. Mechanical, not conviction.
What makes this different from every failed bounce this year is that money kept arriving after the squeeze should have run dry. US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $1.92 billion in the week to August 21, the strongest since October 2025, then extended to seven straight green days. ETF assets went from $78.67 billion to $98.56 billion.
So Bitcoin has flipped from a crowded short market to a crowded long market in about a week. The same mechanism that squeezed shorts on the way up will squeeze longs on the way down. BTC closed a week above its 50-week EMA for the first time since November 2025, which is a real technical shift. It’s also a market leaned hard in one direction, one bad print away from handing back a chunk of this.
Jackson Hole, Friday August 28. Kevin Warsh’s first major keynote as Fed Chair. Whatever tone he sets on rates either extends this rally or caps it. Biggest catalyst left this month.
ETF flows. One redemption day above $200 million says the institutional bid is done and puts $70,000 back in play quickly. While inflows hold, this rally has a floor the June crash never had.
CLARITY Act, again. Trump met Coinbase and Robinhood executives at the White House and floated the US buying Bitcoin directly. Sentiment, not law. Odds on the bill passing this year are still slim, but headlines like that feed a hot market.
Most phishing works on volume. Blast a million emails, hope for a few clicks. This one worked on precision.
Rapid7 exposed an AI-run operation, Operation ASTERIX, that confirmed 885,000 phone numbers were attached to live crypto accounts. It did that by hammering exchange account-validation endpoints, the “this number is already registered” check that exists to make signup smoother. No passwords. No breach. Just asking “is this real” enough times to build a target list.
Then it went quiet. Logs showed 20 lead lookups and 6 phishing emails over two weeks. Small footprint, hand-picked targets, nothing loud enough to trip an alarm.
So the risk isn’t only clicking a bad link. A signup screen telling someone your number already exists is enough to mark you as worth attacking. Worth keeping in mind this week specifically, because people get sloppy right when their balances get bigger.
BTC is near $80,000 after topping $81,000 this week, up about 23% over seven days. ETH is around $2,480. Total market cap is $2.75 trillion, BTC dominance 58.1%. Solana ETFs stretched their inflow streak to five days with the year’s biggest single-day haul on Monday. None of this move is fake. Whether it holds is Friday’s question.
Challenge 3 wraps this week.
Top 5 on the leaderboard by profit get a ₹1,000 Amazon voucher each.
No real money in play, just your calls against everyone else’s.
If someone you know bailed during the Fear weeks and is now asking whether they missed it, forward them this. Honest answer: maybe, but with leverage stacked this hard, the next two weeks matter more than the last two.
Join FedHabit Telegram for launch updates.
Join Fedha Academy for trading courses and free paper trading.
See you next week.
- Team Crypto Cult
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