In brief
- BTC traded around $84,000 Tuesday, up 0.9% on the day, while spot Bitcoin ETFs notched eight consecutive sessions of inflows totaling around $3 billion.
- The 10-year Treasury yield is at its highest since 2007, while Brent crude has eased from Monday's peak.
- Futures markets put the odds of an October Fed hike at 70.3%, up from 55.4% a week ago.
Bitcoin was trading at around $84,000 on Tuesday, up 0.9% over 24 hours but down 2% across the week, according to CoinGecko data, holding a range it has occupied for a fortnight while the assets around it move against it.
The pressure is coming from outside crypto. Treasury yields are sitting near multi-year highs, driven largely by oil. The 10-year peaked at 5.274% on Monday, its highest since June 2007, and the 30-year at 5.583%, a level last seen in 2002. Both eased slightly on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, as crude turned lower. Brent moved back above $100 a barrel on Monday after President Donald Trump rejected Iran's seven-day plan to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lifting the dollar with it. Brent then fell below $104, down about 1.7% on the day after topping $108 on Monday, as US and Iranian officials continued indirect contacts through Qatar and Saudi Arabia restored roughly half the flows through its East-West pipeline, an alternative route to the Strait of Hormuz. Gold has fallen to a seven-week low.
→"The rise in crude prices is capping non-yielding assets, so Bitcoin's rally has taken a bit of a pause," said Kyle Rodda, senior financial market analyst at Capital.com, who expects Bitcoin to struggle for upside momentum while the energy risk persists. He reads the charts more favorably, describing price action as consolidation within a short-term uptrend.
Thahbib Rahman, research analyst at Block Scholes, made a similar point about how little Bitcoin has given up, in a note shared with Decrypt. It has held between $82,000 and $84,000 for a week and a half despite the macro backdrop and the Senate's failure to advance the Clarity Act, he said, with institutional demand behind that resilience.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs have now taken in money for eight straight sessions, per Farside Investors data, a run Rahman put at roughly $3 billion. Monday's contribution was slight: a net $31.07 million, according to SoSoValue, with $54.84 million into BlackRock's IBIT and $10.32 million into Grayscale's mini trust offsetting outflows of $23.19 million from GBTC and $10.90 million from Fidelity's FBTC. The funds now hold $107.82 billion, equal to 6.42% of Bitcoin's market capitalization.
Options traders are hedging their optimism. The 25-delta put-call skew for seven to 30-day tenors is close to neutral, Rahman said, which he reads as traders moving between buying downside protection and positioning for a rally.
Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy has kept buying. The company disclosed purchasing 1,665 BTC for about $142.7 million between September 21 and 27, taking its holdings to 847,666 BTC and past the 847,363 it held in June, a record.
This week's U.S. data will settle the Fed argument either way. August core PCE lands on Wednesday, alongside the third estimate of second-quarter GDP. The measure ran at 3.3% year-on-year in July, and the Fed lifted its own 2026 projection for it to 3.4% at this month's meeting. Friday's September jobs report is forecast to show payroll growth of about 90,000, down from August's 162,000, with unemployment holding at 4.1%, though Barclays chief U.S. economist Marc Giannoni puts September closer to 50,000. The Fed meets on October 27 and 28, three weeks after its first rate rise since 2023. Futures markets put the chance of another quarter-point increase at 70.3%, up from 55.4% a week ago and 17.7% a month ago, according to CME's FedWatch tool. Traders on Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, price the same outcome at 69%, also up over the past week.