Bitcoin Faces Headwinds as Oil Prices Rise and Fed Rate Hike Odds Increase

Bitcoin’s hot summer has come up against Red September once again, today down close to another 1% after a monster 20% rally. It’s not alone, as macro forces weigh on markets across the board.

Bitcoin today was trading for around $78,524, down 0.72% on the day, while the S&P 500 is currently trading at around 7,689.80, off 0.37%. Both moves came as oil prices pushed toward $100 a barrel on fresh U.S.-Iran hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that ships roughly a fifth of the world's oil.

Rising oil prices tend to feed straight into inflation, since energy costs ripple through shipping and manufacturing alike, which makes the Federal Reserve’s upcoming decision on interest rates even harder to call.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 614.88 points, or 1.15%, to 52,799.37. The Nasdaq Composite held up better, slipping 0.19% to 26,457.73, according to Tuesday's session. Markets are now pricing roughly a 57% chance the Federal Reserve raises interest rates a quarter of a percentage point at its September 15-16 meeting. An interest rate hike would be bearish for markets, risk assets like crypto in particular, because as lending gets more expensive, traders prefer safer assets over more volatile ones.

The S&P 500 opened Tuesday at 7,717.81 and briefly dipped to is current 7,689.80 points, a far narrower range than Bitcoin's. The index remains within striking distance of its record close of 7,798.99, set August 13. Global bank HSBC has raised its year-end S&P 500 target to 8,100 even as the index digests this week's headwinds.

The catalyst traces back to Friday's jobs report, which showed U.S. employers added 162,000 positions in August, nearly triple the 53,000 economists had forecast. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%. A labor market that hot gives the Fed less cover to argue the economy needs cheaper money, which is why traders leaned hawkish, meaning they believe the Fed is more inclined to raise rates than cut them.

Bitcoin price: What the charts say

Bitcoin opened Tuesday at $79,090 and slid as low as $77,603 before settling at $78,524. The pullback follows a run from a $68,858 swing low to an $82,281 high, with the coin unable to maintain its bullish momentum, but also unwilling to lose much of it.

Bitcoin’s retracement puts the current golden zone, the band traders watch most, between $73,986 and $75,569. Bitcoin is trading comfortably above it for now. The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, which measures overbought and oversold momentum on a 0-to-100 scale, sits at 60.4, still bullish but down from 66.1 a week earlier.

The Average Directional Index, or ADX, which gauges how strong a trend is regardless of direction, reads 47.2, well above the 25 mark that separates a real trend from noise. The directional lines inside it still favor buyers.

The 50-day exponential moving average (EMA50), a short-term price average, remains below the 200-day version (EMA200), a bearish crossover that has held since before August's rally began, even though Bitcoin closed that month back above its 50-month moving average for the first time since last year's crypto winter set in.

If Bitcoin maintains its momentum, a golden cross (when the EMA50 crosses above the EMA200) may happen in the near term, triggering one of the most bullish indicators chart-watching traders move on.

On Myriad, the prediction market built by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, traders are pricing a 78.4% chance Bitcoin hits $84,000 before it falls to $55,000. Still very bullish, riding the sentiment shift in August.

In fact, today’s reading is little changed from the 77% recorded a week earlier, even as the coin has round-tripped between roughly $76,877 and a $82,240 four-month high in that stretch.

Traders evidently still believe Bitcoin has further room to run, but what happens next could be decided by the bankers next week.