Last week, we finally got what we had been waiting for. Bitcoin woke up and gave us a sense of vitality we hadn’t seen in months.
Since the meteoric rise of last week, however, Bitcoin has mostly traded sideways.
Some might be disappointed by that. But consider the environment. A Druckenmiller op-ed criticizing the Treasury, an escalating U.S. trade war with Canada, and Kevin Warsh’s first Jackson Hole speech, which markets have interpreted as hawkish.
And yet, despite all that uncertainty, Bitcoin has resiliently “stuck the landing.” The high $70Ks have become home for now, as Bitcoin appears to be gathering strength for its next move higher.
If that’s how this plays out, it might be safe to say we’ve left the bear market behind for good.
Other headlines this week include
Bernstein sees $300K as the peak of the 2029 BTC cycle.
Luke Dashjr leaves OCEAN.
Nakamoto Project orange pills readers of the Wall Street Journal.
Latest News
Adoption
Nakamoto Project launches a 12-week BTC education campaign featuring 30 WSJ print ads, 6 sponsored essays by leading thinkers, and a dedicated educational website to improve public understanding.
StarkWare executes the first quantum-resistant BTC transaction as new research suggests physical qubit limits could dramatically reduce the threat, potentially pushing a quantum attack much further into the future.
Sparrow Wallet releases a major security update following an extensive AI-assisted review, expanding independent verification of transactions, block headers and proofs while reducing reliance on external servers.
Regulation
ZachXBT ranks Canada and the UK among the worst countries for digital asset fraud victims, citing poor law enforcement cooperation and failures to act on evidence provided by investigators.
France’s latest tax breach exposed sensitive data on roughly 678,000 people and businesses, creating a physical security nightmare for Bitcoin holders amid the country’s surge in crypto-related wrench attacks.
Core Lightning developers tell node runners to shut down CLN or take nodes offline after AI-generated reports found critical bugs, with technical details embargoed for two weeks.
Markets
Bitcoin ETFs buy $3.3B in August, marking their strongest month of the year even after a $202 million Friday outflow snapped a nine-day inflow streak.
Coinbase and Better open crypto-backed mortgages nationwide, letting U.S. buyers pledge Bitcoin for a down payment without selling coins or facing a margin call.
Bernstein announces a Bitcoin price target of $150,000 in mid-2027 and about $300,000 at the 2029 cycle peak, keeping $1 million by 2033 as the debasement trade takes over.
Treasury
Strategy’s MSTR became the 10th most-traded U.S. stock this week, briefly surpassing Microsoft and Meta in daily share volume as surging Bitcoin prices drove extraordinary investor interest and trading activity.
Strive purchased 1,110 BTC for $81.5 million, bringing holdings to 21,356 BTC and becoming the world’s 7th-largest public Bitcoin holder, while its Bitcoin per diluted share increased 1.4%.
Capital B raises €21 million ($24.5 million) from institutional investors including Adam Back and TOBAM, with proceeds potentially funding 270 additional BTC and increasing its treasury to roughly 3,415 BTC.
Mining
Luke Dashjr is leaving OCEAN Mining after disagreements over Bitcoin mining’s future, resigning as Chairman and CTO, selling his equity and launching a new decentralized mining venture called CONVOY.
NYDIG is refocusing on Bitcoin mining, power generation and HPC infrastructure after selling its institutional trading business to BitGo, with a development pipeline exceeding 3 GW of compute infrastructure.
IREN generated $578.2 million, or 81.8%, of its FY2026 revenue from Bitcoin mining, showing mining remains its core business despite its growing pivot toward AI Cloud Services.
Politics
Afghanistan’s Taliban government declares war on Bitcoin, calling it a scam and arresting traders and shutting exchanges as monthly crypto inflows reportedly collapsed from over $150 million to under $80,000.
Leftist lawmakers erupt as Argentina’s lower house approves Milei’s central bank reform, moving to ban money printing to finance government spending and restrict future governments from funding deficits.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh says inflation remains too high despite a resilient economy and full employment, arguing financial conditions are not restrictive and the Fed’s focus must remain on prices.
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Bam’s 2 Sats
The Week Bitcoin Woke Up
Last week was one of Bitcoin’s strongest weeks of appreciation ever in nominal terms. Yet despite Bitcoin finally waking up after being “dormant” for much of the summer, if not the entire year, the hype still hasn’t fully set in.
Michael Sullivan captures this beautifully in an analysis he’s been tracking over the past couple of months, using the tone and content of Bitcoin-related posts on X to measure shifts in market sentiment.
Social media simply isn’t capturing the same kind of emotion we saw during previous recoveries.
For instance, when Bitcoin first dropped from $100K to $80K and then recovered toward $95K in January, people became hopeful again, only to be crushed by a massive drop toward $60K in early February.
Later, as Bitcoin recovered toward $81–82K in May, optimism started to return. Maybe it had just been a correction after all. Then Bitcoin rolled over again, made new lows, and spent consecutive weeks hovering around $60K beginning in early June.
It’s fair to say Bitcoin sentiment has been in the dirt ever since.
I think this is what they call time-based capitulation.
People slowly started accepting the idea that Bitcoin was in a bear market after the fall from May’s lower highs. And because bear markets typically last at least a year, there was a growing sense that, if the four-year cycle still mattered, perhaps the lows weren’t even in yet. Attention started shifting toward a potential final flush lower around October, as we’ve seen in previous cycles.
But our beat-down emotions are beginning to clash with a newly emerging reality. And that reality is that demand for Bitcoin appears to be shifting. Despite Strategy selling a few thousand coins around the “pico bottom,” the big players, particularly ETFs and institutions, appear to have moved firmly back to the buyer side.
by bam
The month of August saw the strongest accumulation of 2026, with $3.3 billion flowing into Bitcoin ETFs, levels comparable to 2025, when Bitcoin was reaching its all-time high. Perhaps the heavy selling is finally behind us. But sentiment hasn’t caught up with that shift just yet.
In the same way that ETFs were selling heavily from November through January while people remained hopeful and waited for new highs, the opposite may now be happening. Bottoming is a process, and after months of disappointment, people are afraid to let themselves get too hopeful too soon.
And now? Oh, surprise.
Bitcoin teleporting from $62K to $80K in a matter of days may have left a lot of people sidelined.
Some are probably still waiting for new lows in the coming months. Others may now be hoping for one final retracement, another chance to accumulate everything they didn’t buy while Bitcoin sat quietly in the low $60Ks.
Will we get that retracement? Hard to know. What’s impressive about the recent move is how well Bitcoin has “stuck the landing.” We may have pulled back from the $81K highs, but even a hawkish speech from Kevin Warsh at Jackson Hole couldn’t push Bitcoin much below $77K.
Sticking the Landing
But this is where everyone who stayed humble and kept dollar-cost averaging should feel more than proud.
Because the fundamentals never changed. Bitcoin is still limited to 21 million.
And while we were distracted by low prices, AI taking our jobs, and fearful headlines about the next vulnerability, the U.S. dollar never stopped expanding. M2 just kept climbing toward new records.
A good reminder that Bitcoin remains the only option of its kind available to us in this day and age.
Keep stacking.
- Bam
