A 22% Week. A 50/50 Coin Flip.

Crypto Super Hub — The CSH Weekly Brief | August 23, 2026

Bitcoin jumped about 22% this week, its biggest weekly move in years. Roughly US$2.7 billion of short positions were liquidated in a single day on the way up, per Coinglass data, which Bloomberg reported as the largest short wipeout on record. Price touched $79,461 before settling near $76,500 on Sunday evening (Bitstamp).

And my inbox filled with one question, asked a dozen different ways: “Have I missed it?”

Half the internet says yes, the bottom is in, you’re too late. The other half says this is an obvious fake-out and new lows are coming. Both sides sound completely certain.

So this issue does one thing. I went back through 13 years of our data, found every week that looks like this one, and checked what happened next. The answer surprised me, and it isn’t what either camp is telling you.

Small confession before we start: I watched none of this live. I was on a fishing trip with no phone reception, and came back to a repriced market and a phone that wouldn’t stop buzzing. Why that didn’t matter is at the end.

• CSH Score: 31.9, Mid Cycle (a week ago: 24.0, one of the sharpest weekly Score jumps of this bear)

• BTC: about US$76,500 at Sunday evening’s reading, intraweek high $79,461, up roughly 22% on the week (Bitstamp)

• The 79-day run is over. The Score sat at or below 30 from June 4 to August 21, and exited the band on Saturday

• Still bottom 25% of all readings since 2012, about 39% below the October top of $124,774

• Today’s Score band maps to $69,632–$86,377. The top of the 20s band sits at $69,632, roughly 9% below Sunday’s price

The reading changed, and my rules did what they were written to do: above 30, my plan stops buying. The spare cash I keep for a sub-20 reading stays put. You can watch the same number I checked from the boat ramp, free, updated hourly:

Check the live CSH Score

First, the method, in plain words. I took our full daily price and CSH Score history back to 2013 and pulled out every week where Bitcoin rose 18% or more. Big moves come in bursts, so back-to-back qualifying days count as one event.

That gives 46 events in 13 years. Three or four a year, and they almost never happen in the middle of a cycle. They show up at the extremes: near the top of bull markets, or deep in bear markets. That’s not a coincidence. A move this size is rarely new buyers showing up. It’s usually crowded short positions being forced to close all at once, and shorts only get that crowded after months of falling prices. This week fit the pattern exactly.

Thirty of the 46 events happened where we are right now: more than 30% below the all-time high. Here’s what followed, all 30 times, no cherry-picking.

Fifteen of them never let you back in. Price kept going, and the pre-pump lows never traded again.

The other fifteen gave the whole move back within six months. Some went on to make new lows.

Fifteen and fifteen. So when someone tells you this week proves the bottom is in, or proves it’s a trap, here’s the truth: 13 years of data cannot tell those two outcomes apart on the pump alone. Neither can they.

The pump itself tells you very little. What happens in the weeks after the pump has told you a lot.

I went looking for the events that most resemble right now: a long stretch of low CSH Score readings, then one violent week that pushed the Score up through 30. It has happened four times before.

All four turned out to be the end of that bear market. The worst 30-day stretch after any of them was an 11% dip, and twelve months on they sat between +84% and +737%.

Then there’s the one that looked identical and wasn’t. July 2022: a 21% pump week, 65% below the high, CSH Score in the low 20s. The difference only showed up afterwards. The Score stalled at 28, never crossed 30, and four months later Bitcoin made its real bottom at $15,742. Late 2014 tells the same story twice: two 20%+ pump weeks with the CSH Score in single digits, both fully retraced, and that bear ran another year.

So the useful signal was never the green week. It was whether the CSH Score held above 30 and kept climbing in the weeks after. Today it reads 31.9. That is the number I’m watching for the next month, and you can watch it with me on the app.

One more finding, and it’s the one that should lower your heart rate: even in the four cases where the pump really was the turn, Bitcoin went sideways or down for about a month afterwards before the trend started. If this is the real thing, you have time to act like an adult about it. The feeling that you have to move this week is the squeeze talking, not the data.

You stop trying to call it.

My own base case for months has been that this bear had further to run. This week moved hard against that view. If Bitcoin keeps closing above its long-term trend levels and the CSH Score holds above 30, I’ll retire that call, in public, in this newsletter.

But here’s the point: my buying never depended on that view. The plan bought every week through the whole stretch of readings in the 20s. At 31.9 it has stopped buying, because that rule was written down too: buy below 30, sit tight above it. If we drop back into the 20s, the buying starts again automatically. If we get under 20, spare cash goes in. And if we never see the 20s again, I’m already positioned. Being wrong about direction was never allowed to become expensive.

That’s what I’d take from this week. Not a prediction. A plan that works on both sides of the coin flip.

Big product week while I was away:

• The Score to Price Map shipped. The question I get most is “so what price would a CSH Score of 20 be?” The app now shows the live BTC price range for every score band. Today’s answer: the 20s start about 9% below current price.

• CSV trade imports are close. Soon you’ll drop your exchange export on the app and it will match trades to your plan automatically, no hand-logging. Tom’s been testing it on our own accounts.

All on the same free app linked below. Founding access for the first 100 opens later this year.

Create your CSH account today

• Roughly US$2.7 billion of crypto shorts were liquidated in 24 hours on August 19 per Coinglass data, reported by Bloomberg as the largest short liquidation on record. The squeeze, not fresh buying, did a lot of this week’s lifting.

• The reported spark: the US Treasury said it will at least double its long-end buyback operations from US$2 billion to at least US$4 billion each.

• The squeeze kept running: about another US$1 billion of shorts were wiped on August 21 as Bitcoin cleared $75,000 (CoinDesk).

• The follow-through is the story now. In every past case, you couldn’t tell a real bottom from a fake-out on the pump week itself. The difference showed up over the following weeks, in whether the CSH Score held above 30 and kept climbing. 31.9 is the number to watch.

• Weekly closes against the bull market resistance band, the 20-week and 21-week moving averages, currently sitting around $69,400 to $69,600 (Bitstamp weekly data). This week closed about $7K above it. The catch: April and May closed above the same band too, then rolled over, which is why my rule asks for consecutive closes, not one. Worth noticing: the band sits almost exactly where the CSH Score’s 20s band tops out.

• September is historically a weak month for Bitcoin. If it lives up to that this year, the CSH Score’s 20s band starts at $69,632, about 9% below Sunday’s price. That’s where historically cheap begins again.

Back to the fishing trip, because it’s the whole argument in one story.

I had no reception for the biggest week of the year, and it cost me nothing. My plan has been buying since February, through 79 straight days of CSH Score readings in the 20s, when it was boring and nobody wanted to talk about Bitcoin. The position was already built. This week just changed the number next to it.

I didn’t earn that by watching charts. I earned it months ago, when I wrote the plan and let it run.

The market will serve up more weeks like this one. The best time to decide what you’ll do in them is now, while it’s calm.

— Jake

Crypto Super Hub is general information and education only. Nothing here is financial advice, and it doesn’t take your objectives, financial situation or needs into account. Crypto is volatile and you can lose money. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. Do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial adviser before making investment decisions. We hold Bitcoin ourselves, so assume we’re biased.