Bitcoin Surges Past $85,000 Following Fed Rate Decision

Bitcoin climbed to highs of $85,111 on Monday, up 5.7% over 24 hours and clear of a resistance band it had tested for a week, per CoinGecko data.

In one week Bitcoin absorbed a Federal Reserve rate hike, a Bank of Japan hike to a 31-year high, and the Senate's rejection of the Clarity Act, and at no point traded meaningfully below $75,000, Nexo analyst Iliya Kalchev told Decrypt.

External pressure has since eased. Middle Eastern crude exports held up better than forecast, sending Brent to a half-month low, while traders priced in the prospect of U.S.-Iran talks at this week's UN General Assembly, and U.S. and Chinese officials met in New York to lay groundwork for a Trump-Xi summit on September 24.

The bond market mattered more, with the 10-year Treasury yield touching 5.014% on September 14, its highest since October 2023, on oil prices and inflation data still far above the Fed's 2% target, and spiking above 5% again on the day of the decision. Yields then fell across the curve, with the 10-year near 4.93% and the 2-year at 4.67%, as investors took Warsh's focus on inflation as credible.

"This fully anticipated rate hike eliminated a degree of uncertainty," said Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey, who called a clearer macro picture "a necessary prerequisite" for Bitcoin to rise. Most of the de-risking happened before the Fed decision and the Clarity Act vote, he argued, leaving a "sell the rumor, buy the news" setup.

Leveraged liquidations and ETF flows

Short sellers have been carried out, with $648 million of $770 million in positions liquidated across the market in 24 hours coming from the short side, according to CoinGlass. More than $230 million of Bitcoin shorts went in one session as the price recovered through $80,000, Kalchev said. Spot buying then cleared resistance around $82,000, triggering further stop-losses whose forced buying carried it through $84,000, according to Sun. Bitcoin also reclaimed its 50-week moving average.

August's rally ran the same way. Over five days Bitcoin rose 24.6% while active leverage fell 12.6%, and short positions supplied 89% of every liquidated dollar, a Glassnode and Bybit report found.

Wallets that had sold steadily through August turned net buyers by month's end, Kalchev said, and by September 20 were adding at their fastest single-day pace in weeks. Spot volume flipped from net selling to net buying the day the price cleared $80,000.

A Glassnode measure of how hard sellers are pushing coins out spiked in early September before falling by September 20 to one of its lowest readings on record, below where it sat after the December 2022 selloff, which Kalchev reads as sellers running dry.

Fund flows fit the same shape. Spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $746 million across Tuesday and Wednesday, then took in $592 million over Thursday and Friday, ending the week $6.2 million ahead, according to SoSoValue data. It is their smallest weekly net inflow since launch, and follows a $462.7 million outflow the week before.

The case against a sustained move remains. CoinShares head of research James Butterfill noted on Friday that the bigger surprise from the Fed was the removal of expected easing through 2027 from the dot plot, which supports the dollar and delays the liquidity conditions Bitcoin responds to. A further hike this year, he wrote, "now looks increasingly plausible."

Bitcoin's next test is a data calendar it does not control. PCE lands on September 30, jobs on October 2 and CPI on October 14, and Kalchev expects cooling inflation and an intact labor market to matter more than any technical level.